Red rail

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the place in England, see
Red Rail, Herefordshire
.

Red rail
painting of red rail
Painting of a possibly stuffed specimen by Jacob Hoefnagel, ca. 1610

Extinct (around 1693)  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Gruiformes
Family: Rallidae
Genus: †Aphanapteryx
Frauenfeld
, 1868
Species:
†A. bonasia
Binomial name
†Aphanapteryx bonasia
Location of Mauritius (in blue)
Synonyms
List
  • Apterornis bonasia Selys, 1848
  • Didus broecki Schlegel, 1854
  • Didus herbertii Schlegel, 1854
  • Aphanapteryx imperialis
    Frauenfeld
    , 1868
  • Aphanapteryx imperatoris Frauenfeld, 1868
  • Aphanapteryx broeckei (Milne-Edwards, 1868)
  • Didus herberti Milne-Edwards, 1868
  • Didus broeckii Milne-Edwards, 1868
  • Aphanapteryx broeckii Milne-Edwards, 1869
  • Pezophaps broeckei (Schlegel, 1873)
  • Pezophaps herbertii (Schlegel, 1873)
  • Aphanapteryx broecki Günther & Newton, 1879
  • Aphanapteryx broekei Newton & Gadow, 1893
  • Kuina mundyi Hachisuka, 1937
  • Pezocrex herberti (Hachisuka, 1953)

The red rail (Aphanapteryx bonasia) is an

flightlessness when adapting to isolated islands, free of mammalian predators, and that was also the case for this species. The red rail was a little larger than a chicken and had reddish, hairlike plumage, with dark legs and a long, curved beak. The wings were small, and its legs were slender for a bird of its size. It was similar to the Rodrigues rail, but was larger, and had proportionally shorter wings. It has been compared to a kiwi or a limpkin
in appearance and behaviour.

This bird is believed to have fed on

junior synonyms. It has been suggested that all late 17th-century accounts of the dodo actually referred to the red rail, after the former had become extinct. The last mention of a red rail sighting is from 1693, and it is thought to have gone extinct around 1700, due to predation by humans and introduced species
.

Taxonomy

The red rail was first mentioned as "Indian river woodcocks" by the Dutch ships’ pilot Heyndrick Dircksz Jolinck in 1598.

scientific name Apterornis bonasia based on the old accounts mentioned by Strickland. He also included two other Mascarene birds, at the time only known from contemporary accounts, in the genus Apterornis: the Réunion ibis (now Threskiornis solitarius); and the Réunion swamphen (now Porphyrio caerulescens). He thought them related to the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire, due to their shared rudimentary wings, tail, and the disposition of their digits.[4][5][2]

rail
in 1868

The name Apterornis had already been used for a different extinct bird genus from

Aptornis, the adzebills) by the British biologist Richard Owen earlier in 1848. The meaning of bonasia is unclear. Some early accounts refer to red rails by the vernacular names for the hazel grouse, Tetrastes bonasia, so the name evidently originates there. The name itself perhaps refers to bonasus, meaning "bull" in Latin, or bonum and assum, meaning "good roast". It has also been suggested to be a Latin form of the French word bonasse, meaning simple-minded or good-natured.[5] It is also possible that the name alludes to bulls due the bird being said to have had a similar attraction to the waving of red cloth.[2]

The German ornithologist

Emperor Rudolph II in Prague, including a dodo and a bird he named Aphanapteryx imperialis. Aphanapteryx means "invisible-wing", from Greek aphanēs, unseen, and pteryx, wing. He compared it with the birds earlier named form old accounts, and found its beak similar to that of a kiwi or ibis.[7][5][2]

In 1865,

nomenclatural priority, the genus name was later combined with the oldest species name bonasia.[10][5] In the 1860s, the travel journal of the Dutch East India Company ship Gelderland (1601–1603) was rediscovered, which contains good sketches of several now-extinct Mauritian birds attributed to the Dutch artist Joris Laerle, including an unlabelled red rail.[11]

More fossils were later found by the French naturalist Theodore Sauzier, who had been commissioned to explore the "historical souvenirs" of Mauritius in 1889, and these were described by Newton and the German ornithologist

Hans F. Gadow in 1893.[12] In 1899, an almost complete specimen was found by the French barber Louis Etienne Thirioux, who also found important dodo remains, in a cave in the Vallée des Prêtres; this is the most completely known red rail specimen, and is catalogued as MI 923 in the Mauritius Institute. The second most complete individual (specimen CMNZ AV6284) also mainly consists of bones from the Thirioux collection. More material has since been found in various settings.[2][13] The yellowish colouration mentioned by English traveller Peter Mundy in 1638 instead of the red of other accounts was used by the Japanese ornithologist Masauji Hachisuka in 1937 as an argument for this referring to a distinct genus and species, Kuina mundyi (the generic name means "water-rail" in Japanese), but the American ornithologist Storrs L. Olson suggested in 1977 that it was possibly due to the observed bird being a juvenile red rail.[14][5]

Evolution

Adittional subfossils, 1893

Apart from being a close relative of the

lost continent he called "Antipodea". Forbes moved the Chatham Islands bird to its own genus, Diaphorapteryx, in 1893, on the recommendation of Newton, but later reverted to his older name. The idea that the Chatham Islands bird was closely related to the red rail and the idea of a connection between the Mascarenes and the Chatham Islands were later criticised by the British palaeontologist Charles William Andrews due to no other species being shared between the islands, and Gadow explained the similarity between the two rails as parallel evolution.[17][18][19]

In 1945, the French palaeontologist

loss of flight rather than common descent. He also suggested that the grouping of the red and Rodrigues rail into the same genus may have been influenced by their geographical distribution.[20] The French palaeontologist Cécile Mourer-Chauviré and colleagues also considered the two as belonging to separate genera in 1999.[21]

Rails have reached many oceanic

flightlessness. According to the British researchers Anthony S. Cheke and Julian P. Hume in 2008, the fact that the red rail lost much of its feather structure indicates it was isolated for a long time. These rails may be of Asian origin, like many other Mascarene birds.[15] In 2019, Hume supported the distinction of the two genera, and cited the relation between the extinct Mauritius scops owl and the Rodrigues scops owl as another example of the diverging evolutionary paths on these islands. He stated that the relationships of the red and Rodrigues rails was more unclear than that of other extinct Mascarene rails, with many of their distinct features being related to flightlessness and modifications to their jaws due to their diet, suggesting long time isolation. He suggested their ancestors could have arrived on the Mascarenes during the middle Miocene at the earliest, but it may have happened more recently. The speed of which these features evolved may also have been affected by gene flow, resource availability, and climate events, and flightlessness can evolve rapidly in rails, as well as repeatedly within the same groups, as seen in for example Dryolimnas, so the distinctness of the red and Rodrigues rails may not have taken long to evolve (some other specialised rails evolved in less than 1–3 million years). Hume suggested that the two rails were probably related to Dryolimnas, but their considerably different morphology made it difficult to establish how. In general, rails are adept at colonising islands, and can become flightless within few generations in suitable environments, for example without predators, yet this also makes them vulnerable to human activities.[2]

Description

drawing of red rail
1907 restoration by Frohawk

From the subfossil bones, illustrations and descriptions, it is known that the red rail was a flightless bird, somewhat larger than a chicken. Subfossil specimens range in size, which may indicate sexual dimorphism, as is common among rails.[5] It was about 35–40 cm (14–16 in) long, and the male may have weighed 1.3 kg (2.9 lb) and the female 1 kg (2.2 lb).[22] Its plumage was reddish brown all over, and the feathers were fluffy and hairlike; the tail was not visible in the living bird and the short wings likewise also nearly disappeared in the plumage. It had a long, slightly curved, brown bill, and some illustrations suggest it had a nape crest.[23] The bird perhaps resembled a lightly built kiwi, and it has also been likened to a limpkin, both in appearance and behaviour.[15][23]

The cranium of the red rail was the largest among Mascarene rails, and was compressed from top to bottom in side view. The

foramina (openings) ran almost to the front edge of the narial opening. The mandibular rostrum of the lower jaw was long, with the length of the mandibular symphysis (where the halves of the mandible connect) being about 79% of the cranium's length. The mandible had large, deep set foramina, which ran almost up to a deep sulcus (furrow). Hume examined all available upper beaks in 2019, and while he found no differences in curvature, he thought the differences in length was most likely due to sexual dimorphism.[2]

The

neotenic, with juvenile features such as weak pectoral apparatuses and downy plumage.[24][22]

Contemporary descriptions

drawing of red rail
1601 sketches of a killed or stunned specimen, attributted to Joris Laerle

Mundy visited Mauritius in 1638 and described the red rail as follows:

A Mauritius henne, a Fowle as bigge as our English hennes, of a yellowish Wheaten Colour, of which we only got one. It hath a long, Crooked sharpe pointed bill. Feathered all over, butte on their wings they are soe Few and smalle that they cannot with them raise themselves From the ground. There is a pretty way of taking them with a red cap, but this of ours was taken with a stick. They bee very good Meat, and are also Cloven footed, soe that they can Neyther Fly nor Swymme.[25]

Another English traveller, John Marshall, described the bird as follows in 1668:

Here are also great plenty of Dodos or red hens which are larger a little than our English henns, have long beakes and no, or very little Tayles. Their fethers are like down, and their wings so little that it is not able to support their bodies; but they have long leggs and will runn very fast, and that a man shall not catch them, they will turn so about in the trees. They are good meate when roasted, tasting something like a pig, and their skin like pig skin when roosted, being hard.[15]

Contemporary depictions

An oil painting depicting a red-feathered parrot with yellow wing tips; a large, ungainly, duck-like bird with grey, white and yellow feathers; a parrot with a black back, yellow breast and a yellow and black tail; and a brown-feathered bird with a long bill eating a frog
Edwards' Dodo, a 1626 painting by Roelant Savery, possibly showing a red rail (or a bittern) in the lower right

The two most realistic contemporary depictions of red rails, the Hoefnagel painting from ca. 1610 and the sketches from the Gelderland ship's journal from 1601 attributed to Laerle, where brought to attention in the 19th century.

tropical specimens were preserved as dried heads and feet. It had probably lived in the emperor's zoo for a while together with the other animals painted for the same series.[15] The painting was discovered in the emperor's collection and published in 1868 by Georg von Frauenfeld, along with a painting of a dodo from the same collection and artist.[9][28] This specimen is thought to have been the only red rail that ever reached Europe.[29]

Jacopo Bassano's 1570 painting Arca di Noè, perhaps showing a red rail (or a bittern) in the lower right

The red rail depicted in the Gelderland journal appears to have been stunned or killed, and the sketch is the earliest record of the species. It is the only illustration of the species drawn on Mauritius, and according to Hume, the most accurate depiction. The image was sketched with pencil and finished in ink, but details such as a deeper beak and the shoulder of the wing are only seen in the underlying sketch.[11][2] In addition, there are three rather crude black-and-white sketches, but differences in them were enough for some authors to suggest that each image depicted a distinct species, leading to the creation of several scientific names which are now synonyms.[23] An illustration in van den Broecke's 1646 account (based on his stay on Mauritius in 1617) shows a red rail next to a dodo and a one-horned goat, but is not referenced in the text. An illustration in Herbert's 1634 account (based on his stay in 1629) shows a red rail between a broad-billed parrot and a dodo, and has been referred to as "extremely crude" by Hume. Mundy's 1638 illustration was published in 1919.[2]

As suggested by Greenway, there are also depictions of what appears to be a red rail in three of the Dutch artist

Eurasian bitterns.[27][2] In 1977, the American ornithologist Sidney Dillon Ripley noted a bird resembling a red rail figured in the Italian artist Jacopo Bassano's painting Arca di Noè ("Noah's Ark") from ca. 1570. Cheke pointed out that it is doubtful that a Mauritian bird could have reached Italy this early, but the attribution may be inaccurate, as Bassano had four artist sons who used the same name.[31] A similar bird is also seen in the Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Elder's Noah's Ark painting.[15] Hume concluded that these paintings also show Eurasian bitterns rather than red rails.[2]

Behaviour and ecology

1869 adaptation of the Hoefnagel painting

Contemporary accounts are repetitive and do not shed much light on the life history of the red rail. Based on fossil localities, the bird widely occurred on Mauritius, in montane, lowland, and coastal habitats.

tortoises, as the Rodrigues rail did.[15][2] No contemporary accounts were known to mention the red rail's diet, until the 1660s report of Johannes Pretorius about his stay on Mauritius was published in 2015, where he mentioned that the bird "scratches in the earth with its sharp claws like a fowl to find food such as worms under the fallen leaves."[32]

Milne-Edwards suggested that since the tip of the red rail's bill was sharp and strong, it fed by crushing

nemertean and planarian worms; Mauritius has endemic species of these groups which live in leaf-litter and rotten wood. He could also have referred to the now extinct worm-snake Madatyphlops cariei, which was up to 200 mm (7.9 in) long, and probably lived in leaf-litter like its relatives do.[2][15][33]

Shells of the extinct land-snail Tropidophora carinata have been found with puncture holes possibly made by feeding red rails

Hume noted that the front of the red rail's jaws were pitted with numerous foramina, running from the nasal aperture to almost the tip of the premaxilla. These were mostly oval, varying in depth and inclination, and became shallower hindward from the tip. Similar foramina can be seen in probing birds, such as kiwis, ibises, and

mechanoreceptors concentrated at the tip. Their bill-tips allow them to detect buried prey by sensing cues from the substrate. The foramina on the bill of the red rail were comparable to those in other probing rails with long bills (such as the extinct snipe-rail), though not as concentrated on the tip, and the front end of the bill's curvature also began at the front of the nasal opening (as well as the same point in the mandible). The bill's tip was thereby both strong and very sensitive, and a useful tool for probing for invertebrates.[2]

A 1631 letter probably by the Dutch lawyer Leonardus Wallesius (long thought lost, but rediscovered in 2017) uses

word-play to refer to the animals described, with red rails supposedly being an allegory for soldiers:[34][2]

The soldiers were very small and moved slowly, so that we could catch them easily with our hands. Their armor was their mouth, which was very sharp and pointed; they used it instead of a dagger, were very cowardly and nervous; they did not behave as soldiers at all, and walked in a disorderly manner, one here, the other there, and did not show any faithfulness towards one another.[34]

Sir Thomas Herbert, showing a broad-billed parrot
, a red rail, and a dodo

While it was swift and could escape when chased, it was easily lured by waving a red cloth, which they approached to attack; a similar behaviour was noted in its relative, the Rodrigues rail. The birds could then be picked up, and their cries when held would draw more individuals to the scene, as the birds, which had evolved in the absence of mammalian

predators, were curious and not afraid of humans.[23]
Herbert described its behaviour towards red cloth in 1634:

The hens in eating taste like parched pigs, if you see a flocke of twelve or twenties, shew them a red cloth, and with their utmost silly fury they will altogether flie upon it, and if you strike downe one, the rest are as good as caught, not budging an iot till they be all destroyed.[15]

Many other endemic species of Mauritius became extinct after the arrival of humans to the island heavily damaged the

palm orchid, have also become extinct.[15]

Relationship with humans

Men working in a wooded area on a 16th-century illustration
Depiction of Dutch activities on Mauritius in 1598, with various birds

To the sailors who visited Mauritius from 1598 and onwards, the fauna was mainly interesting from a culinary standpoint. The dodo was sometimes considered rather unpalatable, but the red rail was a popular

gamebird for the Dutch and French settlers. The reports dwell upon the varying ease with which the bird could be caught according to the hunting method and the fact that when roasted it was considered similar to pork.[23] The last detailed account of the red rail was by the German pastor Johann Christian Hoffmann, on Mauritius in the early 1670s,[2]
who described a hunt as follows:

... [there is also] a particular sort of bird known as toddaerschen which is the size of an ordinary hen. [To catch them] you take a small stick in the right hand and wrap the left hand in a red rag, showing this to the birds, which are generally in big flocks; these stupid animals precipitate themselves almost without hesitation on the rag. I cannot truly say whether it is through hate or love of this colour. Once they are close enough, you can hit them with the stick, and then have only to pick them up. Once you have taken one and are holding it in your hand, all the others come running up as it [sic] to its aid and can be offered the same fate.[15]

drawing that includes a red rail
Pieter van den Broecke's 1617 drawing of a dodo, a one-horned goat, and a red rail; after the dodo became extinct, its name may have been transferred to the red rail

Hoffman's account refers to the red rail by the German version of the Dutch name originally applied to the dodo, "dod-aers", and John Marshall used "red hen" interchangeably with "dodo" in 1668.[37] Milne-Edwards suggested that early travellers may have confused young dodos with red rails.[30] The British ornithologist Alfred Newton (brother of Edward) suggested in 1868 that the name of the dodo was transferred to the red rail after the former had gone extinct.[38] Cheke suggested in 2008 that all post 1662 references to "dodos" therefore refer to the rail instead.[37] A 1681 account of a "dodo", previously thought to have been the last, mentioned that the meat was "hard", similar to the description of red hen meat.[15] The British writer Errol Fuller has also cast the 1662 "dodo" sighting in doubt, as the reaction to distress cries of the birds mentioned matches what was described for the red rail.[23]

In 2020, Cheke and the British researcher Jolyon C. Parish suggested that all mentions of dodos after the mid-17th century instead referred to red rails, and that the dodo had disappeared due to predation by

feral pigs during a hiatus in settlement of Mauritius (1658–1664). The dodo's extinction therefore was not realised at the time, since new settlers had not seen real dodos, but as they expected to see flightless birds, they referred to the red rail by that name instead. Since red rails probably had larger clutches than dodos (as in other rails) and their eggs could be incubated faster, and their nests were perhaps concealed like those of the Rodrigues rail, they probably bred more efficiently, and were less vulnerable to pigs. They may also have foraged from the digging, scraping and rooting of the pigs, as does the weka.[39]

230 years before

theory of evolution
, the appearance of the red rail and the dodo led Mundy to speculate:

Of these 2 sorts off fowl afforementionede, For oughtt wee yett know, Not any to bee Found out of this Iland, which lyeth aboutt 100 leagues From St. Lawrence. A question may bee demaunded how they should bee here and Not elcewhere, beeing soe Farer From other land and can Neither fly or swymme; whither by Mixture off kindes producing straunge and Monstrous formes, or the Nature of the Climate, ayer and earth in alltring the First shapes in long tyme, or how.[23]

Extinction

drawing of red rail
Drawing by Peter Mundy, 1638

Many terrestrial rails are flightless, and island populations are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic (human-caused) changes; as a result, rails have suffered more extinctions than any other family of birds. All six endemic species of Mascarene rails are extinct, all caused by human activities.

crab-eating macaques.[2]

Since the red rail was referred to by the names of the dodo in the late 1600s, it is uncertain which is the latest account of the latter.

Aldabra Atoll. Being inquisitive and fearless, Hume suggested the red rail would have been easy prey for cats, and was thereby driven to extinction.[32][2]

See also

References

  1. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2012-1.RLTS.T22728884A39099824.en
    .
  2. ^
    S2CID 198258434
    .
  3. ^ Strickland, H.E.; Melville, A. G. (1848). The Dodo and Its Kindred; or the History, Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and Other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon. London: Reeve, Benham and Reeve. p. 21.
  4. OCLC 84482084
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0-87474-804-8
    .
  6. ^ Schlegel, H. (1854), "Ook een Woordje over den Dodo (Didus ineptus) en zijne Verwanten", Verslagen en Mededeelingen der Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen (in Dutch), 2: 232–256
  7. S2CID 34186343
    .
  8. ^ Milne-Edwards, A. (1868). Recherches sur la faune ornithologique éteinte des iles Mascareignes et de Madagascar (in French). Paris: G. Masson. pp. 61–83.
  9. ^
    doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.1869.tb06880.x
    .
  10. ^ de Sélys Longchamps, E. (1848), "Résumé concernant les oiseaux brévipennes mentionnés dans l'ouvrage de M. Strickland sur le Dodo", Revue Zoologique Par la Société Cuvierenne (in French), 11: 292–295
  11. ^
    doi:10.3366/anh.2003.30.1.13
    .
  12. ^
    doi:10.1111/j.1469-7998.1893.tb00001.x
    .
  13. S2CID 87212166
    .
  14. ^ Hachisuka, M. (1937). "Untitled [Description of Kuinia mundyi]". Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. 57: 54–157.
  15. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7136-6544-4
    .
  16. ^
    doi:10.1098/rstl.1879.0043
    .
  17. S2CID 3981755
    .
  18. S2CID 46553514
    .
  19. ^ Andrews, C. W. (1896). "On the extinct birds of the Chatham Islands. Part I.: The osteology of Diaphorapteryx hawkinsi". Novitates Zoologicae. 73–84: 72.
  20. PMC 1692427
    .
  21. hdl:10088/2005
    .
  22. ^
    JSTOR 40168337
    .
  23. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8014-3954-4
    .
  24. ^ Herremans, M. Trends in the evolution of insular land birds, exemplified by the Comoros, Seychelles and Mascarenes. Proceedings International Symposium on Vertebrate Biogeography and Systematics in the Tropics. Bonn. pp. 249–260.
  25. doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.1915.tb08192.x
    .
  26. ^ Rothschild, W. (1907). Extinct Birds. London: Hutchinson & Co. p. 131.
  27. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4081-5725-1
    .
  28. doi:10.1080/00222936908696012
    .
  29. ^ Hume, J. P.; Prys-Jones, R. P. (2005). "New discoveries from old sources, with reference to the original bird and mammal fauna of the Mascarene Islands, Indian Ocean" (PDF). Zoologische Mededelingen. 79 (3): 85–95.
  30. ^
    ISBN 978-0-486-21869-4
    .
  31. ^
    ISBN 978-0-521-11331-1
    .
  32. ^
    S2CID 84473440
    .
  33. ISBN 978-99949-22-05-5
    .
  34. ^
    doi:10.3366/anh.2017.0422
    .
  35. doi:10.1017/S0030605300020457
    .
  36. doi:10.1017/S0030605300012643
    .
  37. ^
    doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.2006.00478.x
    .
  38. ^ Newton, A. (1868). "Recent ornithological publications". Ibis. 4 (2): 479–482.
  39. doi:10.3390/quat3010004
    .
  40. ^ Leguat, F. (1891). The voyage of François Leguat of Bresse, to Rodriguez, Mauritius, Java, and the Cape of Good Hope. London: Hakluyt Society. p. 71.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Red_rail&oldid=1209711310"