Episode 980
Rodrigues parrot
Fri, 2020-Jan-10 00:50 UTC
Length - 2:12
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Friday, 10 January 2020 is Rodrigues parrot.
The Rodrigues parrot or Leguat's parrot (Necropsittacus rodricanus) is an extinct species of parrot that was endemic to the Mascarene island of Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. It is unclear to which other species it is most closely related, but it is classified as a member of the tribe Psittaculini, along with other Mascarene parrots. The Rodrigues parrot bore similarities to the broad-billed parrot of Mauritius, and may have been related. Two additional species have been assigned to its genus (N. francicus and N. borbonicus), based on descriptions of parrots from the other Mascarene islands, but their identities and validity have been debated.
The Rodrigues parrot was green, and had a proportionally large head and beak and a long tail. Its exact size is unknown, but it may have been around 50 cm (20 in) long. It was the largest parrot on Rodrigues, and it had the largest head of any Mascarene parrot. It may have looked similar to the great-billed parrot. By the time it was discovered, it frequented and nested on islets off southern Rodrigues, where introduced rats were absent, and fed on the seeds of the shrub Fernelia buxifolia. The species is known from subfossil bones and from mentions in contemporary accounts. It was last mentioned in 1761, and probably became extinct soon after, perhaps due to a combination of predation by rats, deforestation, and hunting by humans.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:50 UTC on Friday, 10 January 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see Rodrigues parrot on Wikipedia.
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This has been Russell. Thank you for listening to featured Wiki of the Day.
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