One day in August, 1875, a greyish-blue parrot was shot on a small island in the Indian Ocean near Mauritius. It was the last time a Rodrigues parakeet was known to be seen alive.
That bird was one of only two ever preserved. Exactly 150 years on, both rest under our care at the University Museum of Zoology in Cambridge, England. Aside from a few fossilised fragments, they represent the only physical evidence the species ever existed.
For many extinct animals, museums are now their last remaining habitat. Without these collections, we wouldn’t just have lost the creatures themselves – we’d have lost the very knowledge that they existed at all. This can be thought of as double extinction.
