The world is brimming with “fancy” pigeons these days, but the biggest showstopper of them all is the rainbow-feathered Nicobar pigeon.
The vibrant creature is named for the Nicobar Islands, one of the most isolated island chains in the world. Flocks of these pigeons have a tendency to hop islands in search of food, so they have a fairly sizable range, extending thousands of miles across the Malay Archipelago to places like Palau and the Solomon Islands.
“Island taxa such as the dodo and solitaire often represent extreme examples of evolution,” Oxford zoologist Alan Cooper tells National Geographic. “By examining island birds we can investigate how evolution works — because extreme examples are often the best views of how something works.”
Thankfully, unlike the dodo and solitaire, the Nicobar isn’t nearing extinction … at least, not yet. According to the Lincoln Park Zoo, which has several of these avians in residence, the Nicobar pigeon is considered near threatened “due to overhunting and predation by introduced species, such as cats and rats.”
