The Colossal Foundation Partners With the Samoa Conservation Society to Find the Critically Endangered Tooth-Billed Pigeon Through Advanced Bioacoustic Technologies
The tooth-billed pigeon, also known as the 'little dodo' or manumea, is endemic to Samoa, a small island in the South Pacific. Once numbering between 4,000-7,000 in the 1980s, the bird, with its large head and unique beak, has been pushed to the brink of extinction due to predation from invasive species, habitat loss, and human hunting. Experts estimate that less than 100 tooth-billed pigeons remain, and it is considered a 'lost' species, since it was last photographed in 2013.
The partnership, also in alliance with the IUCN SSC Pigeon and Dove Specialist Group and BirdLife International, has successfully confirmed the existence of the tooth-billed pigeon and aims to identify its location by using Colossal's AI bioacoustic tools. The goal is to capture live specimens to biobank, as well as assess the feasibility of establishing a captive breeding program as a safeguard against extinction in the wild.
'The manumea is on the very brink of extinction, and the devastating impact of invasive species on this unique, native bird is sobering,' said Joe Wood, Co-Chair of the IUCN SSC Pigeon and Dove Specialist Group. 'But there are glimmers of hope in the strength of the partnerships which have been forged and the dedication of the expert field team. We still have a chance to save these extraordinary creatures, and I have no doubt that technology being developed by Colossal will be critical, not just for the manumea, but for many other endangered birds globally."
In a major breakthrough in bioacoustics, Colossal's AI team successfully trained its custom advanced machine learning algorithm to successfully recognize the pigeon's distinctive vocalizations, allowing scientists to locate a bird that no one has seen in over a decade. The few-shot bird call classifier software was based on a meager five minutes of manumea audio recordings. Colossal has open-sourced the algorithm, which accurately censuses and monitors bird populations, for other conservationists to use in the search for additional lost or elusive bird species.
'Our active efforts to save the manumea have increased significantly with the help of Colossal's bioacoustic tools and the work they have accomplished thus far,' said Moeumu Uili of Samoa Conservation Society. 'Samoans hold the species in high regard and it is seen as a crucial symbol of natural heritage and a vital part of its ecosystem.'
Using Colossal's machine-learning pipeline, the Samoa Conservation Society will upload raw forest soundscapes allowing the algorithm to flag the manumea's signature calls and enabling field teams to triangulate detections, locate live birds, and capture them for biobanking efforts. Colossal's ongoing funding and AI expertise will propel detection to hands-on conservation. This same software platform is now being used by Colossal to analyze bioacoustics data from wolves in Yellowstone.
"Colossal's AI capabilities have allowed us to successfully identify and recognize the tooth-billed pigeon's distinctive vocalizations and we can now track a species that hasn't been photographed in over 13 years," said Matt James, Executive Director of the Colossal Foundation. 'We're excited to deploy additional monitoring systems in the field and see what this means for the future population of the species.'
Conserving the tooth-billed pigeon in Samoa is crucial for maintaining the island's ecosystem and biodiversity. The tooth-billed pigeon is unique for its distinctive bright red beak with tooth-like projections. As a primary seed disperser, the manumea plays a vital role in sustaining the native forest, as other birds cannot open and disperse the seeds of certain trees. Protecting this species also safeguards the island's cultural heritage, as the manumea is Samoa's national bird.
'The AI, acoustics and sound classifications we're building at Colossal demonstrate the effectiveness of AI-powered bioacoustic technology in low-data scenarios," said CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences Ben Lamm. 'Our unique techniques have already helped in Samoa and will be applied to other endangered birds in other habitats. This has brought us closer to saving one of the world's closest living relatives to the dodo and ensuring the tooth-billed pigeon also doesn't go extinct.'
The Colossal Foundation is a 501(c)(3) dedicated to supporting the use of cutting-edge technologies to conservation efforts globally to help prevent extinction of keystone species. The organization deploys cutting-edge de-extinction technologies and support to empower partners in the field to reverse the extinction crisis.
SCS is a local non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting the conservation of Samoa's biological diversity and natural heritage. They work collaboratively with communities, the Government and partners to raise awareness on the state of Samoa's environment and the species within. They further work with schools and youth groups to educate them on the natural heritage that we are blessed with, and actions that can help in species and habitat recovery.
BirdLife's mission is to conserve birds, their habitats and global biodiversity, working with people toward sustainability in the use of natural resources.
ABOUT IUCN SSC PIGEON AND DOVE SPECIALIST GROUP
Key activities of the Specialist Group include collaborating with BirdLife International to assess and monitor the status of Columbiform species, working to raise the profile of threatened pigeons and doves, and convening expertise for conservation. This also entails facilitating communication between organizations involved in ex-situ and in-situ species programmes and between the scientific community and the holders of traditional ecological knowledge. We believe that this group has the potential to become a driving force for the conservation of Columbiformes worldwide, and are committed to growing a diverse network of people who will help us achieve this.
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USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Dire wolf meet-up: Watch Colossal's female wolf frolic with older brothers
Colossal Biosciences created three dire wolves using genetic engineering. Now that the wolves have gotten older – the two males are approaching one year old – they are being assimilated into a pack. Those cute dire wolves are forming a pack. If you remember, Colossal Biosciences, the company seeking to bring back the woolly mammoth, revealed in April 2025 it had successfully birthed a trio of dire wolf puppies. Using dire wolf DNA extracted from fossils – yes, dire wolves aren't just the stuff of "Game of Thrones" fiction, they existed tens of thousands of years ago – the Colossal researchers created dire wolf genomes. They used those as a guide to editing a gray wolf genome to express dire wolf traits. The resultant fertilized dire wolf eggs were implanted into and born by surrogate dog mothers, resulting in the successful resurrection of an Ice Age-era species. Two male dire wolves, Romulus and Remus, born in October 2024, are approaching their first birthday – each weighed more than 90 pounds at six months old, significantly larger than standard gray wolves, the Dallas, Texas-based biotech company says – while a female, Khaleesi (named after the "Game of Thrones" character), is about six months old. Home delivery: A meteorite crashes into a Georgia home. Turns out it's older than Earth. 'She's completely been accepted into the pack': All in the dire wolf family Recently, the Colossal team thought it was time to introduce the brothers to their sister. "We're working through the socialization and the introduction of Khaleesi into the pack," Colossal CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm told USA TODAY. "They're starting to behave more and more like wolves," he said. "We don't want them to be lap dogs." You can see Khaleesi come into a grassy, fenced six-acre section of Colossal's 2,000-acre ecological preserve where she first gets to meet Romulus, in a video posted Aug. 12 on Colossal's YouTube channel. "At first, she was a little like, 'Whoa, he's right there," said Paige McNickle, manager of animal husbandry at Colossal and manager of the team that takes care of the dire wolves. The older male wolf, Romulus, came up to Khaleesi, and they smelled each other and then she took off on a run and he followed her. "They were playing with each other. Their ears were up the entire time, which is a good, happy, calm, wolf behavior that we were hoping to see," McNickle said. After a bit, Romulus is ushered away and Remus is brought into the area. "They were both excited. Everybody was so good in play, but Remus is almost more gentle than Romulus," McNickle said. "Romulus is just a little bit bigger, and Remus did really good. We saw lots of play behaviors," she said. "They kept their ears up, they wagged their tails. They followed each other around. They all got to explore the pool together. When they got hot, they went right over and cooled themselves off, especially Khaleesi." The trio then got to play together, although in coming days, she will get extended time with one brother on one day and another on the next day, McNickle said. The play area has a collection of logs, which Khaleesi is small enough to fit under, where she occasionally played hide and seek from her larger brothers. "We want to make sure that … (when) they're playing, they can separate, they can socialize, they can smell each other, but then, you know, if Khaleesi wants to get away – or Romulus or Remus want to get away – we need to make sure that we give them that comfort so they don't feel overwhelmed or feel pressured," Lamm said. "But the great news about it is she's completely been accepted into the pack." Leader of the dire wolf pack That pack will likely be growing. Colossal is planning to engineer two to four more dire wolves over the next year, Lamm said. Rather than let these wolves breed, the researchers want future pups from "a couple different cell lines," he said. "We will actually get more genetic diversity." And wolves of different ages, as they are adopted in the pack, will grow up "in some kind of social hierarchy." As of now, Remus, the smaller of the male wolves, appears to be emerging as the leader, having exhibited Alpha male characteristics. When the dire wolves were first introduced to the world, Remus "kind of became the star," Lamm said. "Remus really has this take-charge attitude. … Romulus has always been bigger and I just thought, natural selection, the biggest and strongest." Recently, Romulus and Remus began receiving larger carcasses for feeding – from rabbits to deer legs and cattle portions, beyond their regular menu of ground meat, meat chunks, and other foods – so they would learn important social skills. Colossal is currently working with Grizzly Systems and Yellowstone National Park's Wolf Project, deploying audiovisual recording devices to understand pack behavior and wolf populations. Artificial intelligence software helps identify "specific wolves in that setting and then begin to understand how we can estimate population size based on how many times we count the same wolf," said Matt James, Colossal's chief animal officer, in another video on the company's YouTube channel. Those devices will eventually be deployed in Colossal's reserve to monitor its growing dire wolf pack. Those tools will make it "so that we can just be observing them in a more passive manner," Lamm said. "This is just the next chapter in their story." Colossal continues other projects amid dire wolf controversy Critics have argued that the pups are not truly dire wolves, but genetically-modified gray wolves. Colossal has countered that their dire wolves share 99.5% of the same genetics as the original dire wolf. Some have also scolded Colossal for tinkering with genetics, but the tech firm insists its work will aid in the conservation and protection of endangered species. Recently, Colossal announced plans to resurrect the long-extinct New Zealand bird species, the moa, at the urging of filmmaker Peter Jackson, who is an investor in Colossal. Colossal first gained attention with its 2021 announced goal of bringing back the woolly mammoth. Earlier this year, the company unveiled its Colossal Woolly Mouse, which was genetically engineered to have characteristics that could eventually be used in creating a next-generation woolly mammoth embryo to be born by a female elephant. In August 2022, the company said it also planned to de-extinct the Australian thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Another project: the return of the dodo, which was killed off about 350 years ago. Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @ & @mikesnider & msnider@ What's everyone talking about? Sign up for our trending newsletter to get the latest news of the day
New York Post
21-07-2025
- New York Post
12-foot bird has been gone for 600 years — now scientists want to ‘de-extinct' it
The real big bird returns. A company that claims to have resurrected the dire wolf has unveiled plans to bring back the moa, a long-extinct bird that once towered over people. The company, Colossal Biosciences, claimed it had joined forces with acclaimed 'Lord Of The Rings' director Sir Peter Jackson to de-extinct the ancient avian, the largest species of which stood 12-feet tall and weighed more than 500 pounds, Time reported. This flightless bird reportedly inhabited New Zealand until getting hunted to extinction by Māori settlers around 600 years ago, Livescience reported. Coordinating the ambitious de-extinction campaign is the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, between the main Māori tribe (iwi) on NZ's South Island and the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. 3 An upland moa skeleton. 'There's a lot of science still to be done – but we can start looking forward to the day when birds like the moa or the huia (an extinct NZ bird with a curved bill) are rescued from the darkness of extinction,' said Sir Peter Jackson. 'Even the journey will bring incredible insights about the history of this land and enrich discussions as to the potential nature of our future here.' Museum of New Zealand 'Some of those iconic species that feature in our tribal mythology, our storytelling, are very near and dear to us,' explained Ngāi Tahu archaeologist Kyle Davis, who is collaborating on the moa's second coming. 'Participation in scientific research, species management, and conservation has been a large part of our activities.' Jackson, an investor in Colossal who helped bring the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre into the fold, explained that the proposed de-extinction is part of efforts to ensure that 'some of the most critically endangered species in Aotearoa/New Zealand are protected for future generations.' Unfortunately, resurrecting the moa will be quite a bit more difficult than bringing his fantasy creatures to life on the big screen. Experts analogized the process to that of the dire wolf, a long-dead species of canid that scientists resurrected by harvesting DNA from fossil specimens and then filling in the genetic gap with a gray wolf genome — like how frog DNA was used to engineer dinosaurs in 'Jurassic Park.' Bringing back the moa is decidedly more challenging as the moa is far more removed from its closest living relatives, emus and a chicken-like bird called the tinamou, than the dire wolf is from the gray wolf. Whereas dire wolves only split from modern wolf-like canids — the group that includes gray wolves — around 5.7 million years ago, the common ancestor of the moa and tinamou lived 58 million years ago, while the moa and emu predecessor lived 65 million years ago. During their 'time apart,' the moa developed a lot of unique traits that are difficult to duplicate. 3 Colossal Biosciences is currently working to resurrect the woolly mammoth as well. Courtesy of Colossal To achieve this feat of genetic engineering, the team plans to aims to sequence and reconstruct the genomes of all nine extinct moa species, while also sequencing high-quality genomes of their aforementioned relatives. The team will then use precursors to sperm and egg cells to Frankenstein a 'surrogate bird' from living species and then genetically alter it to resemble a moa. They plan to introduce the edited calls into the embryonic tinamou or emu inside an egg, after which the cells will hopefully migrate to the embryo's gonads, changing them so that the females produce eggs and the males produce moa sperm. In theory, that hatchling will then grow up, mate and produce moa chicks. As of yet, the team is still in the process of selecting said surrogate, although the emu's size — they can grow up to 6 feet 2 inches tall — makes it a more suitable surrogate than the comparatively runty tinamou, per the researchers. 3 Colossal Biosciences 'brought back' dire wolves using a primordial stew with gray wolf DNA. Colossal Biosciences / Business Wire Unfortunately, the moa egg is also a lot bigger than an emu egg, so this could present another challenge if they were to use the latter as the incubation chamber in which to hatch the hybrid bird. 'A South Island giant moa egg will not fit inside an emu surrogate, so Colossal will have to develop artificial surrogate egg technology,' said Nic Rawlence, director of the Otago Palaeogenetics Lab at the University of Otago in New Zealand and a critic of the moa plan. Colossal's chief science officer, Beth Shapiro explained that they're exploring 'different strategies for artificial egg incubation, which will have application both for moa de-extinction and bird conservation work.' Of course, there are several criticisms of the project that were directed at prior resurrection campaigns as well. Critics of the dire wolf project claimed that their so-called dire wolf was still genetically a gray wolf with increased size and a white coat. Rawlence even believes that 'genetically engineering specific genes in an emu to match a moa could have dire developmental consequences.' Beth Shapiro told Live Science that animal welfare was a priority, explaining, 'We thoroughly evaluate health risks of any proposed edit before selecting them for our final list of edits.' Jackson believes the project has exciting potential when it comes to reviving lost species. 'There's a lot of science still to be done – but we can start looking forward to the day when birds like the moa or the huia (an extinct NZ bird with a curved bill) are rescued from the darkness of extinction,' he said. 'Even the journey will bring incredible insights about the history of this land and enrich discussions as to the potential nature of our future here.' The moa isn't the only animal Colossal plans to add to its menagerie of long-dead creatures. The biotech firm has also targeted the woolly mammoth for de-extinction — and is a step closer to its goal after engineering a critter called the woolly mouse.
Los Angeles Times
14-07-2025
- Los Angeles Times
‘Lord of the Rings' director backs long-shot de-extinction plan, starring New Zealand's lost moa
WASHINGTON — Filmmaker Peter Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa. His fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird has led to an unusual partnership with a biotech company known for its grand and controversial plans to bring back lost species. Last week, Colossal Biosciences announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa — which stood 12 feet tall — with $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh. The collaboration also includes the New Zealand-based Ngai Tahu Research Center. 'The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do,' Jackson said. 'Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa.' Outside scientists say the idea of bringing back extinct species onto the modern landscape is likely impossible, although it may be feasible to tweak the genes of living animals to have similar physical traits. Scientists have mixed feelings on whether that will be helpful, and some worry that focusing on lost creatures could distract from protecting species that still exist. The moa had roamed New Zealand for 4,000 years until they became extinct around 600 years ago, mainly because of overhunting. A large skeleton brought to England in the 19th century, now on display at the Yorkshire Museum, prompted international interest in the long-necked bird. Unlike Colossal's work with dire wolves, the moa project is in very early stages. It started with a phone call about two years ago after Jackson heard about the company's efforts to 'de-extinct' — or create genetically similar animals to — species such as the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf. Then Jackson put Colossal in touch with experts he'd met through his own moa bone collecting. At that point, he'd amassed 300 to 400 bones, he said. In New Zealand, it's legal to buy and sell moa bones found on private lands, but not on public conservation areas — nor to export them. The first stage of the moa project will be to identify well-preserved bones from which it may be possible to extract DNA, Colossal's chief scientist, Beth Shapiro, said. Those DNA sequences will be compared with genomes of living bird species, including the ground-dwelling tinamou and emu, 'to figure out what it is that made the moa unique compared to other birds,' she said. Colossal used a similar process of comparing ancient DNA of extinct dire wolves to determine the genetic differences with gray wolves. Then scientists took blood cells from a living gray wolf and used the CRISPR gene-editing tool to modify them at 20 sites. Pups with long white hair and muscular jaws were born late last year. Working with birds presents different challenges, Shapiro said. Unlike mammals, bird embryos develop inside eggs, so the process of transferring an embryo to a surrogate will not look like mammalian IVF. 'There's lots of different scientific hurdles that need to be overcome with any species that we pick as a candidate for de-extinction,' Shapiro said. 'We are in the very early stages.' If the Colossal team succeeds in creating a tall bird with huge feet and thick pointed claws resembling the moa, there's also the pressing question of where to put it, said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who is not involved in the project. 'Can you put a species back into the wild once you've exterminated it there?' he said. 'I think it's exceedingly unlikely that they could do this in any meaningful way.' 'This will be an extremely dangerous animal,' Pimm added. The direction of the project will be shaped by Maori scholars at the University of Canterbury's Ngai Tahu Research Center. Ngai Tahu archaeologist Kyle Davis, an expert in moa bones, said the work has 'really reinvigorated the interest in examining our own traditions and mythology.' At one of the archaeological sites that Jackson and Davis visited to study moa remains, called Pyramid Valley, there are also antique rock art done by Maori people — some depicting moa before their extinction. Paul Scofield, a project advisor and senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he first met the 'Lord of the Rings' director when he went to his house to help him identity which of the nine known species of moa the various bones represented. 'He doesn't just collect some moa bones; he has a comprehensive collection,' Scofield said. Larson writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
