Manumea, Dodo’s Closest Living Relative, Seen Alive After 5-Year Disappearance

The manumea, also known as the tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris), has been sighted for the first time since 2020. The observations, made in October and November near Uafato on Samoa’s island of Upolu, took an international collaboration and Samoan local knowledge to achieve. 

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There’s a reason it was the Galapagos Islands that inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution. Life takes different, sometimes quite weird and wonderful, paths in isolation. Unfortunately, island species are uniquely vulnerable when the isolation ends and they are exposed to invaders they have never had to deal with before. 

The dodo became the archetype for an island species lost forever, both because it was the first whose extinction was widely recognized and because it looked so different from anything else. That doesn’t mean it has no relatives at all, however, and the closest is considered to be Samoa’s manumea, which is in great danger of sharing the dodo’s fate. Fortunately, that relationship may also prove its salvation.

Samoan environmentalists have been looking for the manumea for years, but have lacked the resources for a systematic search. That changed when Colossal Biosciences, famous for their dire wolves that are not really dire wolves, added the dodo to the list of extinct species they wish to bring back, and started funding the closest relatives.

In November, the Samoa Conservation Society posted on their Facebook page, “We’re thrilled to share that the team sighted Manumea in the forests of Uafato! Although we couldn’t capture a photo this time – the bird’s quick movements in and out of the canopy, sudden and long viewing distance made it nearly impossible – the sightings are strong confirmation that the Manumea is still here!”

A single spotting without recorded evidence can easily be an error, as all too many cases around the world reveal. However, so many members of the search team saw the manumea, sometimes together witnessing the same appearance, that the team are confident this is the real thing. On the other hand, we’re still a fair way from a capture that would allow DNA to be collected, let alone doing it often enough to establish a captive breeding program, both goals of the program.

The sightings were also not a total surprise, after the Society announced in May that its call has been recorded and recognized by an AI tool that distinguishes it from other bird calls. A visiting birdwatcher claimed to have seen a manumea the year before.

While Colossal’s de-extinction program faces a great many criticisms, one unambiguously good aspect of their work is the way they funnel money into protecting species most closely related to the ones they aim to bring back. By helping conserve near relatives, Colossal builds a store of knowledge that may be applicable to the de-extinction target’s ecology, if they ever make a living animal. 

Truly reviving a species will require much more than cloning its DNA; it will involve finding a place where it can live in the wild, and understanding how its relatives do that plays a crucial role. Since the very rich may appear to be keener on directing money towards bringing back extinct species than saving their living counterparts before they go, Colossal is sometimes one of the few places funding is available for projects like this. 

The Samoan Conservation Society also thanked Birdlife International, two zoos, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Pigeon and Dove Specialist Group and the Samoan Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, showing just how much work went into finding such a rare species. That’s all in addition to the Uafato community, rangers, field assistants, and volunteers from oversea, who ventured into the relatively protected rainforest in valleys on Upolu’s northeast.

The manumea is Samoa’s national bird, which is something of an achievement in a nation made up of islands with a hundred bird species, nine of them found nowhere else. Its fondness for consuming, and spreading, large seeds other birds can’t eat makes it particularly popular, both with biologists who know how crucial this is, and a public that likes the ambition. Until the 1980s the manumea was common, but invasive species, along with the usual culprits of habitat loss and climate change, caused an exceptionally rapid decline.

Like every other recent year, 2025 has been a bad one for extinction, marked by three species of rapidly diminishing bandicoot family declared gone in one year, along with others dotted around the world. However, the manumea’s sighting, along with the recent rediscovery of the flat-headed cat, prove extinction is seldom inevitable until very close to the end.