AI is helping rescue a nearly extinct bird species

The Colossal Foundation has developed an AI algorithm that can detect the critically endangered tooth-billed pigeon’s calls, helping conservationists locate the lost species.

Partnering with the Samoa Conservation Society (SCS), Colossal Biosciences‘ nonprofit arm hopes that this technology will lead to more sightings of this lost bird — and eventually assist in saving other endangered species as well.

Saving the tooth-billed pigeon, Samoa’s national bird

The tooth-billed pigeon is a large bird native to Samoa’s rainforests, and which has only been found within this one country. Also called the manumea or “little dodo,” Samoa’s national bird is one of the closest living relatives to the famously extinct dodo.

Unfortunately, genetics isn’t the only aspect in which the two species are similar. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) considers the tooth-billed pigeon to be critically endangered with fewer than 250 birds left, while the last known photograph of the species was taken in 2012.

It currently tops the list of priority species maintained by the IUCN’s Pigeon and Dove Specialist Group (PDSG), with co-chair Joe Wood telling Mashable this is due to the pigeon’s “lack of close relatives, extraordinary appearance, and genetic proximity to the dodo,” as well it being “extremely rare and little-known.”

Hopefully this won’t be the case for much longer. Colossal’s new bioacoustics AI algorithm aims to help conservationists identify the tooth-billed pigeon’s calls, assisting them in locating and protecting the few birds that remain. Though the organisation has most frequently made headlines due to de-extinction efforts such as its genetically modified “dire wolves” or its woolly mammoth mice, Colossal considers such work to go hand-in-hand with conservation projects such as this.

“[Saving] lost species is one of the core conservation strategies,” Colossal Foundation’s executive director Matt James told Mashable. “We had this idea that, can you search for and find species that haven’t been seen in 10 or more years? It is almost, in its own way, its own form of de-extinction.”

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