In news : Recently, the Black-Browed Babbler has been rediscovered after 170 years
Key updates
- The black-browed babbler was first identified by German naturalist Carl Schwaner at some point between 1843 and 1848
- In October 2020, two men in Indonesian Borneo saw this bird but they didn’t recognise and snapped photos of it before releasing the palm-sized creature back into the forest, later the Ornithologists confirmed that it was Bl.ack-Browed Babble
- For more than 170 years after that reporting, this single specimen represented the only recorded sighting of this bird species — the species holotype is now at the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, Netherlands.
About the Black-Browed Babbler
- Appearance: A small brown babbler with paler underparts. Brown crown with broad black band through eye
- Black-Browed Babble is often called ‘the biggest enigma in Indonesian ornithology.
- Little is known about the creature with brown and grey feathers, which has been “missing” longer than any other Asian bird
- The conservation status of the species is listed in the “Data Deficient” category in the IUCN red list.
- IUCN says “the global population size has not been quantified, but the species is described as possibly extinct and known only from a single specimen”
Source: Indian Express
