The call of the o'o. Nature under pressure in Amsterdam

A 'must-see' exhibition at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam (opposite the canal boat jetties). This exhibition ranks among my Top 5 exhibitions of 2024 and is thematically organized around the subject 'Nature Under Pressure'. Extinct animals are featured extensively in the various rooms. The role of famous scientists and their works are also on display, including Charles Darwin, Alexander von Humboldt, Maria Sibylla Merian, and Georges Cuvier. You have until this coming Sunday, January 26, 2025, to visit this exhibition.

Dodo, quagga, great auk and Hawaiian Kauai-o'O

How the dodo We will never know what it sounded like. The dodo is an extinct bird belonging to the pigeons and the subfamily of the dodos. The dodo was a relatively large, stocky bird with small wings that were no longer suitable for flight. The dodo could only move by walking. Nevertheless, the dodo was not a flightless bird but a member of the pigeon family. The body color was gray to brownish-gray, while the underside and wings were lighter in color. The animal was about a meter tall and was distinguished by its long, downward-curved beak. Food, consisting of seeds and fruits, was broken down with the beak. Additionally, the dodo could bite viciously with its large beak. The dodo had no natural enemies in its habitat and, as a result, gradually lost its ability to fly. The perception of enemies changed when humans arrived in the form of Dutch colonists. It was not the humans themselves, but primarily the animals they brought with them, that had a disastrous effect on the dodo. Rats and pigs, in particular, wreaked havoc among the dodos, especially their eggs and young. Much research has been conducted on the dodo, but because the animal was never described using a scientific method, there are still many uncertainties regarding its appearance and behavior. Much was known about the dodo at the time, but most information has not been described unambiguously or has been lost. Much information about the dodo is fragmentary, and some observations contradict others. Many sketches and drawings of the dodo have survived, but these are often based on incorrect models, causing the dodo to appear to have taken on various forms over time. Because the dodo had a very small distribution area, far fewer remains have been found compared to animals that went extinct millions of years ago, such as various species of dinosaurs. [/ One_half] [one_half_last]           The dodo lived in the forests on the island of Mauritius and likely became extinct between 1680 and 1690. The bird symbolizes the disappearance of animal species due to the degradation of nature by human activity. Because of this, it is one of the most famous birds in the world, and many books have been written about the animal.

Looking at the worn, balding coat of this mare, you can see that it is an old taxidermy specimen. It is unmistakably a quagga, given the head and neck with zebra stripes that gradually fade at the torso and merge into the reddish-brown colored coat. Friedrich Kerz (1842-1915), one of the first professional taxidermists, mounted this mare. She subsequently ended up at Naturalis via the Groote Museum van Artis. Normally, this mare is not exhibited due to her fragility, but an exception has been made for the 200th anniversary Naturalis exhibition. Naturalis owns a second mounted quagga, a stallion from Cape of Good Hope.

The South African plains were once the habitat of quaggas. The name quagga is derived from the barking sound the zebras made. Due to the rise of farming during the nineteenth century, the quagga's habitat became increasingly smaller. Moreover, the animal was intensively hunted for its hide and meat. Because of its distinctive coat, the quagga was also a special attraction in zoos. Thus it happened that the last living quagga stood not on the savannah, but in the Amsterdam Zoo.

De great auk (Pinguinus impennis) is a seabird belonging to the family of auks (Alcidae) that became extinct in 1844. The great auk was about 75 cm tall, weighed up to 5 kg, and had only small wings, with which it could not fly but dived all the better. Its legs were positioned at the very back of the body, which also benefited its diving, but it could only move with difficulty on land. This bird had therefore largely sacrificed its locomotion, both in the air and on land, to be completely in its element underwater. The Canadian breeding grounds were first plundered by sailors who used the proceeds to replenish their food supplies. Later in the 18th century, people settled on the islets to club the birds to death, blanch them, and then strip them of their down. The fatty carcasses were used as fuel, including for lamp oil. By 1785, the slaughter caused by down collection had progressed to such an extent that Captain George Cartwright warned of the species' impending extinction. Consequently, in the 19th century, Geirfuglasker was the species' last refuge. The bird had been safe there for centuries because Icelanders held a superstition that visiting the island of the 'Geir' bird brought great misfortune. The island vanished from the face of the earth in 1830 due to a volcanic eruption. About 40 birds managed to survive and settled on Eldey, a small island they had never used until then because it lay too close to Iceland itself. There, they fell prey to science. Especially in Great Britain, it was very fashionable at that time to preserve rarities in alcohol, and thus a trade in great auk skins arose. In 1844, the last pair was killed and the last egg collected, which is now on display in Stromness (Orkney). At the time, it was thought that there might be more further north, but that turned out not to be the case. Moho braccatus is the scientific name of a bird that in Hawaiian Kauai-o'O hot. It is an extinct songbird that was endemic to the island of Kauai (Hawaii). At the end of the last century, the call of the very last male was recorded. You can hear this sound in the exhibition The Call of the O'o: Nature Under Pressure. The Kauai o'O was still frequently described in 1899. However, during expeditions in 1928 and 1936, ornithologist George Campbell Munro found no evidence of the presence of this bird. In 1940, ornithologist Walter Raymond Donaghho heard birdsong that could have originated from the Kauai o'O. It was not until 1960 that a small population of approximately 34 individuals was discovered on the island of Kauai in a dense swamp forest (the Alakai swamp forest) at an altitude of 1000 m in the area around Mount Waičalečale. In 1975, ornithologists Harold Douglas Pratt and Robert Shallenberger revisited the Alakai swamp forest and were able to photograph and film a male there. On a subsequent expedition in 1981, a pair was discovered. After Hurricane Iwa in 1982, the female disappeared. The male was last sighted in 1985 and last heard in 1987. Expeditions in 1989 and after Hurricane Iniki in 1993 were unsuccessful; no more birds were seen or heard. In 2000, the Kauai o'O was added to the IUCN Red List of Extinct Species.

Habitat destruction and the introduction of rats and pigs are cited as possible causes for the extinction of the Kauai-o'O. Furthermore, experts suspect that introduced mosquito species spread parasitic diseases such as avian malaria and avian pox.  

Groundbreaking insights

Visitors are introduced to naturalists such as Conrad Gessner (1516-1565), who attempted to collect everything ever written about animals in his beautifully illustrated Historiae animalium. Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) was trained as a painter and studied the metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly at a young age. The exhibition features watercolors by her. Naturally, the scientists are absent. carolus linnaeus (1707-1778), Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Charles Darwin did not (1809-1882). They all arrived at groundbreaking insights that ultimately led to the conclusion that there is a great interconnectedness within ecosystems. Unfortunately, that realization did not prevent so many animal and plant species from disappearing.

Maria Sibylla Merian (1647 – 1717) was a German-born painter of insects and flowers, as well as a naturalist, who studied plants and insects and produced detailed drawings of them. Her observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of caterpillars into butterflies are an important, albeit not widely known, contribution to entomology. As far as is known, she was the first to draw insects together with the plants on which they thrived. The butterfly species Merian's brush is named after her. Her most famous work is the book Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, containing sixty engravings.

carolus linnaeus He was born on May 23, 1707, and died on January 10, 1778. He is also known (after his elevation to the nobility in 1761) as Carl von Linné. He was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who developed the modern system for naming organisms. He is known as the “father of modern taxonomy.” Taxonomy is the science of classifying individuals or objects into groups. Many of his writings were in Latin; his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus and by his noble name Carolus a Linné.

Georges Cuvier (1769 – 1832) was a French naturalist who was highly significant as the founder of the fields of geology, anatomy, zoology, and paleontology. In 1819, he was ennobled for his services. He is one of the 72 Frenchmen whose names are inscribed in relief on the Eiffel Tower. Within paleontological taxonomy, Cuvier is best known as the founder of the comparative method in anatomy, earning the reputation of being able to determine an animal's systematic placement by knowing only a single bone. This same reputation led to Cuvier being called upon to provide his authoritative and decisive opinion on paleontological disputes. This occurred in the cases of Mosasaurus, Pterodactylus, “Homo diluvii testis,” and Iguanodon. He correctly identified the first two as reptiles, the third (using the holotype fossil in Teylers Museum in Haarlem) correctly as an amphibian, and the last considerably less correctly as a rhinoceros, although he was able to base his judgment on just a single tooth at that time as well. According to a famous anecdote, one of his students hid behind a goat skull and woke Cuvier at night with the words: “I am the devil and I am going to devour you!” To which Cuvier is said to have replied laconically: “I dare to doubt that, for I can already tell by your horns that you belong to the herbivores.”  

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The exhibition revolves around the question of how Western European man relates to nature, how this can be explained by looking at history, and how we can move into the future with new insights. The Call of the O'o is based on the natural history collections of the Allard Pierson. Famous drawings, books, and prints from the rich Allard Pierson Artis Library have been supplemented with pieces from other museums and archives. The Call of the O'o: Nature Under Pressure at the Allard Pierson Museum until January 26, 2025: https://allardpierson.nl/bezoek/tentoonstellingen/de-roep-van-de-oo-natuur-onder-druk/  

Previous museum blogs: https://www.postzegelblog.nl/tag/made-in-holland/