“You see heaps and heaps of the birds’ bones in archaeological site. If you hunt animals at all their life stages, they will never have a chance.” –Morten Allenton, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen
By Tony Orman
Exterminating the giant bird
The rapid extinction of the several moa species from New Zealand has long been debated. Some, in defence of the early Polynesian migrants who had arrived about 1250, have said the flightless bird numbers were already in decline. The Polynesian migrants were conservationists it was claimed.
In 2014, scientists investigated further and concluded humans were the sole factor in wholesale killing of the birds and in destruction of habitat. Strangely their findings received little media coverage at the time.
But the reality was that moa were obliterated in a geological “blink of the eye” — just one or two centuries.
The end for the moa was devastatingly fast.
Yet before that, for probably 50 or 60 million years, nine species of large, flightless birds known as moas (Dinornithiformes) thrived in New Zealand. About 600 years ago, moa suddenly became extinct. Their disappearance had coincided with the arrival of the Polynesian migrant humans to New Zealand somewhere in the late 13th century.
Scientists since have long wondered what influence humans played in the decline and extinction.
Others argued the moa was on the way out — naturally — and humans were not responsible.
But the question nagged. Were humans the principal factor? Even the one and only factor?
Then again, or were moa numbers in decline and moa doomed to extinction anyway due to disease and volcanic eruptions? Scientists went into study mode.
A recent and very impressive book on the moa by publishers Potton and Burton of Nelson. (The book was first published in 2012.)
Convincing Case
The conclusions were summed by a Spanish evolutionary biologist. They were emphatic.
“The paper presents a very convincing case of extinction due to humans,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain. “It’s not because of a long, natural decline.”
One of the researchers Morten Allentoft, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Copenhagen, outlined the logic behind the research group’s conclusions. Archaeologists know that the Polynesians who first colonised New Zealand, ate moa of all ages, as well as the birds’ eggs.
“You see heaps and heaps of the birds’ bones in archaeological sites,” Allentoft said. “If you hunt animals at all their life stages, they will never have a chance.”
Using ancient DNA from 281 individual moa from four different species, including Dinornis robustus (at 2 metres, the tallest moa, able to reach foliage 3.6 meters above the ground) and radiocarbon dating, Allentoft and his colleagues set out to determine the moa’ genetic and population history over the last 4000 years. The moa bones were collected from five fossil sites on New Zealand’s South Island, and ranged in age from 12,966 to 602 years old. The researchers analysed mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from the bones and used it to examine the genetic diversity of the four species.
The research team’s analysis found no sign that the moa’s population had already been collapsing when the Polynesian colonists settled New Zealand. Indeed, the scientists concluded that the opposite was true – bird numbers were stable during the 4,000 years prior to extinction.
Populations of D. robustus even appeared to have been slowly increasing when the Polynesians arrived.
Yet in less than 200 years later, the birds had gone. “There is no trace of their pending extinction in their genes,” Allentoft said. “The moa are there, and then they are gone.”
Humans alone killed off the moa
Trevor Henry Worthy is an Australia-based paleozoologist from New Zealand, known for his research on moa and other extinct vertebrates.
He commented that the Copenhagen University paper presented an “impressive amount of evidence” that humans alone drove the moa extinct. Trevor Worthy, an evolutionary biologist and moa expert at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, was independent i.e. not involved in the official research.
“The inescapable conclusion is these birds were not senescent, not in the old age of their lineage and about to exit from the world. Rather they were robust, healthy populations when humans encountered and terminated them.”
At the time he expressed doubts that even the Copenhagen University’s team’s “robust data set” would settle the debate about the role people played in the moa’s extinction, simply because “some have a belief that humans would not have” done such a thing.
Human Tendency
Copenhagen University’s Morten Allentoft, said he was not surprised that the Polynesian settlers killed off the moa. The reality is any other group of humans would have done the same, he suspected.
“We like to think of indigenous people as living in harmony with nature,” he said. “But this is rarely the case. Humans everywhere will take what they need to survive. That’s how it works.”
In late 2014 New Zealand scientist Richard Holdaway, (a specialist in extinction biology), Copenhagen University’s Morten Allentoft and four other scientists completed a study entitled “An extremely low-density human population exterminated New Zealand moa.”
They concluded: “New Zealand moa (Aves: Dinornithiformes) are the only late Quaternary megafauna whose extinction was clearly caused by humans. Polynesians exterminated viable populations of moa by hunting and removal of habitat.”
Of course, Maori hunted Moa to extinction, just like they Huia hunted for its feathers to adorn their cloaks and exterminated that species as well. Maori were never conservationists as they claim to be, They were tribal brutal cannibals that Slaughted other Iwi tribes, Ate them and took a few captives back for slaves. Why do you think Capt. James Cook named the Gisborne province Poverty Bay? Because the local Maori were emaciated and were near starvation as they basically had raped the shellfish and bird life to extermination.
Finding food in NZ must have been an enormous problem for pre European Maori . Unlike the tropical pacific islands they came from there is little palatable food here. They had gardens of ferns and ate the roots which have too much silica. The kumara was temperamental and went rotten when stored wrongly . Except for moas and seals there were no large sources of protein. I will tactfully not mention cannibalism. When settlers arrived Maori excitement over and expertise in growing veges, along with raising chickens and pigs needs to be emphasized. It must have made daily life so much less stressful.
And when they ran out of Moa meat they started eating each other.
They may have been doing that simultaneously.
I guess if they couldn’t catch a moa for a few weeks one one of your neighbours would suffice
The logical fact that moa eggs were eaten, made big inroads into the continuance if moas as the flightless birds were very slow breeders. Colonisation by the Polynesian migrants meant a bleak future for the moa – and for that matter any humans already in residence in New Zealand.
The Copenhagen scientists comment sums it up well. “We like to think of indigenous people as living in harmony with nature,” he said. “But this is rarely the case. Humans everywhere will take what they need to survive. That’s how it works.”
Thank you Tony for bringing moa to our attention!
There is a modern drive to officially sanction Tikanga & matauranga moaori i. e. indigenous knowledge &. ways of knowning to sit along side & be equal to science. This is odd indeed, since the first requirements would be literacy & mathematics these stone age people claiming to be indigenous had neither. Nor had even invented the wheel. Nor are they indigenous That is just a fraudulently greedy assertion devoid of fact.
Science could have instructed them not to hunt their main food source to extinction. Perhaps human flesh was preferred over moa & the other flightless birds hunted to extinction & THUS irresistible??In lock step is the surprisingly vigorous modern move to transfer the entire conservation estate into Iwi tribal ownership. On track record alone, this would be an environmental disaster with no justification, or satisfaction but a social, political cave in to a racist lobby list of demands for further wealth, A list which would go on & on until the oft stated intent to take control of the country”one way or another, is achieved!!!
Hmmm, indigenous people is noted above with special knowledge???
“for the impossibility that there is to be a sub-set of separate humans living on some islands in the South Pacific it would need to defy all the rules of science & known social facts of human movements across the globe.”
The inconvenient truth is there is no such human on Earth that can be confirmed as a maori. Another inconvenient truth emerges, that there is something else going on here which allows for NZ legislation& environmental progress to be bogged down with something that doesn’t even exist, & also costing taxpayers millions supporting the apparition.
Further on moa, there has been a lot of oxygen & brow bursting energy blaming deer for forest destruction & collapse un supported by science research. When rosey cheeked Swiss yodeler centric people saw that our mountain land scapes didn’t match the rolling green meadows& snowcapped peaks of the Swiss chocolate box picture. i. e. Just didn’t look “right “So something must be wrong, well we got a crime we need a criminal to fit the mold, moa, long gone without thought of deer being equal to moa in absentia, not them so must be deer.The brow bursting fails to note that ecosystems are like a spring & will always return to the natural setting regardless of the pushing force. In the case of browse, a 2 metre moa could reach far higher than any deer. Recently it has been pointed out that Moa & deer browse differently. Moa clip, deer strip.
For all that the “wrong”chocolate box look ignores 1000’s of years of earthquakes, Gabrielle/Bolla storms & violent precipitation at high altitudes of mountains stretching across the roaring 40 belt of wind, dropping metres of rain & snow, then frost followed by soaring heat waves.
Also little of that brow bursting energy is directed to the sheer unpalatability of some plants.
Take the toxic tutu, & all manner of thorns,barbs & leathery leaves of others, but for wow factor, the violent peppery horopito is in a class alone. Pick off a leaf & chew it, palatability takes on a new meaning after the wheezing.To finish try a good chew on a stem of matagouri or bush lawyer.Your tongue will never forgive you. Any talk of deer breaking down a vast forest ecosystem is pure nonsense & should be put on a dusty shelf with Bat Man & Mighty Mouse videos..