How a Single Mother Brought a Species Back from the Brink of Extinction – The Marginalian
This article was taken from Traversal.
“In the great chain of cause and effect,” Alexander von Humboldt wrote when he taught science to read the poetry of nature, “no single fact can be considered by itself.
When the first European colonists arrived on the shores of New Zealand during Humboldt's lifetime, the cats and rats that descended on their ships began to decimate the native population of black ribbons – sparrow-sized birds with yellow feet that have evolved outside of mammals, are monogamous, and raise only two young a year.
Bird by bird, claw by claw, there were only seven that survived within a century.
Wishing to encourage the survivors to reproduce, conservationists moved them to the island of Mangere, where twenty thousand trees were planted just so that the robins could find a hospitable place to live. But they did not understand the ways of the bird's heart, because it is one mystery.
Two of the seven died.
Of the five survivors there was one female capable of laying fertile eggs – an elderly robin known as Old Blue. At the age of eight, he had lived twice as long as a black robin. With the survival of this species living in Old Blue near flightless wings, scientists thought that if its offspring were raised by womb parents, they would be able to lay more eggs.
Warblers were the first designated foster parents, but they were unable to adequately feed the chicks.
The Tomtits try next, but they are very successful as foster parents – the black chicks grow up seeing themselves as tomtits and only want to marry other tomtits.
Eventually, the chicks are returned to Old Blue, who thrive under her care as dark robots.
A single mother brought an entire species back from the brink of extinction.
Old Blue lived fourteen years and raised eleven chicks. All the black robins in the world today, about 250 of them, are messengers of his genes – a winged reminder that great danger can be ended with a single act of steadfast compassion.
