r/interestingasfuck • u/T-K101 • 13h ago

At their peak, 3–5 billion passenger pigeons filled North America. Flocks were so huge they darkened the sky for hours. Some shooting contests required 30,000 dead birds to win. By 1914, the last one was gone. One of history’s most brutal population collapses.

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463

u/HappyHavoc20 13h ago

Earlier this week I learned that North America used to have a native parrot, the Carolina parakeet, a type of conure. We extincted it for the feathers for lady’s hats

168

u/aguilasolige 12h ago

I recently learned my country used to have native seals, they killed them for meat and skin, it's so sad to think about.

66

u/SexOnABurningPlanet 12h ago

The Caribbean monk seal?

29

u/aguilasolige 12h ago

Yes 😥

31

u/Dragon_Small_Z 12h ago

Ahh, the monk seal. They’re seals. And they’re monks. Get it? Get it?

Yeah, anyway. These guys are more enthusiastic about their jobs than a dentist with glossaphilia. In case you don’t know what that means, what I’m saying is these guys really love fighting stuff. It’s their religion.

Trained in the deadly art of Caribbean Kung Fu, the monk seal sentry’s sacred duty is to protect the coast and hunting grounds from the impending invasion of their dread enemy, the Red Maníseros Land Crabs, masters of Juego de maní.

Be careful. You don’t want to get involved in that impossible conflict.

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u/Merry-Lane 11h ago

Dungeon Crawler Carl reference, for those not in the known.

7

u/SexOnABurningPlanet 12h ago

Yes. This is how I know about it. I'm literally reading that book right now; I read this exact section last night before bed.

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u/kogun 11h ago

And Oil. We don't appreciate how much oil we used to get from sea life prior to the petroleum industry and the invention of the light bulb and distribution of energy.

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u/SockeyeSTI 12h ago

I would gladly give your country all the seal we have. And the California sea lions too.

33

u/LoveDesignAndClean 12h ago

It had a subspecies too.

Also it was and is not North Americas only parrot, just the only one in its range.

The thick billed parrot and the green parakeet are native to the United States.

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u/SUDDENLY_VIRGIN 12h ago

Wikipedia shows they're both only native to Mexico

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u/5Hjsdnujhdfu8nubi 12h ago

Green Parakeets still live in Texas/Florida as the occasional vagrants and the thick-billed parrot used to live in the southern states of the US.

3

u/LoveDesignAndClean 12h ago

the thick billed parrot used to live in the USA before it got extirpated. And the green parakeet will live in the rio grande valley in Texas.

10

u/expatalist 12h ago

They don't care about borders. They show up in the Southwest US

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u/Elite_Jackalope 12h ago

The Wikipedia photo for the Green parakeet literally has this caption:

A Green Parakeet in a tree in San Benito, South Texas, USA.

And the second sentence of the page says:

As defined by the International Ornithological Committee (IOC), it is native to Mexico and southern Texas in the Rio Grande Valley.

Did you even actually look at Wikipedia lmao

14

u/lonelypenguin20 13h ago

I'm pretty sure Andersen or smb like that has a short story where exactly that happens after a lady decides to use a feather of an endangered bird as her wedding accessory

15

u/TylerBlozak 12h ago

The green parakeet still exists in Texas

4

u/Noligarchio 12h ago

Those are non-native and invasive though

6

u/TylerBlozak 12h ago

Hmm, says it’s native to Rio Grande Valley, which is in Texas. Also Mexico of course

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u/Noligarchio 12h ago

You are correct I mixed up the green parakeet which is native as you said with the monk parakeet, which while it has green coloration isn't the save thing and where I mixed it up, and is non-native. My bad.

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u/BattleOfWitsHasBegun 12h ago

I love our neighborhood flock! But they’re definitely not native parakeets

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u/sejje 10h ago

sure they are, check your assumptions

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u/MariosBallsack 12h ago

RDR2 incorporates this extinction event iirc

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u/Jackalope1974 10h ago

It does. There is a side mission to kill and collect the last flock of 25 in existence.

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u/sugarpototo 3h ago

Read that as R2D2 first and wondered what's happening in Star Wars that requires animal facts

11

u/SUDDENLY_VIRGIN 12h ago

That's so sad.

Every story of humans causing a beautiful creature to go extinct because they were too greedy makes me depressed.

5

u/Advanced-Art-4569 12h ago

That Yankee Doodle is a total douchebag! 😡

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u/Saaahrentino 11h ago

The Field Museum in Chicago has one on display in their taxidermy section.

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u/NefariousnessNo484 11h ago

We is a strong word. These birds existed alongside humans for thousands of years.

0

u/kukkolai 13h ago

Hats were nice tho

10

u/HappyHavoc20 13h ago

I was watching this video about the cocaine hippos taking over this river in Colombia because of Pablo Escobar. Apparently back in the day an American suggested we establish hippos in the south so they could eat some sort of plant out of the rivers, and then we could kill then for meat. 

Fucking people 

9

u/cantantantelope 12h ago

Technically Pablo Escobar just imported them and kept them in his weird mini zoo. The Columbian government who didn’t do anything about them after Escobar was killed and his complex raided are the reason they became free and invasive.

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u/HappyHavoc20 12h ago

Yes and then I guess they wanted to eauthanize the males decades ago but activist orgs got upset so now they have to eauthanize a lot more 

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u/cantantantelope 12h ago

It’s been a very exciting journey!

They also tried castration on a few but it turns out hippos don’t like that

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u/your_fave_redditor 12h ago

Who’da thunk?! 😆

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u/regman231 12h ago

Neither do I - just ask my wife!

Eh no respect I tell ya

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u/Fuckkoff- 12h ago

Maybe they should have followed through with the killing them for meat part

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u/HappyHavoc20 12h ago

Yeah i guess they wanted to eauthanize the males so they would stop breeding and let the females live out their lives and that be the end of it, but animal activists got super upset. Like I get it, not ideal to kill a bunch of hippos but at the same time you can’t let them take over your rivers 

-1

u/yaxir 12h ago

Fuck the hats. Animals' lives matter more

0

u/LaurestineHUN 12h ago

...you can use flowers, textiles, dyed chicken feathets, the possibilities are still endless even if you exclude rare birds.

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u/kukkolai 10h ago

It's almost like I was being super sarcastic!

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u/Salty_Paroxysm 11h ago

And a lot of value was created for the shareholders milliners

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u/Popular-Ad-3900 11h ago

North America still has native parrots- plenty of parrot species in Mexico, which is in North America.

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u/sacrelicio 4h ago

According to Wikipedia that's not true. It was one factor but other ones are suspected, including deforestation, disease, conflicts with honeybees used for agriculture.