Spix’s Macaw From ‘Rio’ Movie Now Extinct In The Wild

The Spix’s macaw accomplished onscreen acclaim in 20th Century Fox’s “Rio” as a beguiling parrot named Blu who travels thousands of miles trying to save his species.

In any case, a study released this week found that the Brazilian bird is presently extinct in nature.

The Spix’s macaw is one of eight bird species, half of them in Brazil, affirmed extinct or suspected extinct in the report from BirdLife International. Deforestation is a main cause of the Spix’s macaw’s disappearance from its normal natural surroundings, as indicated by the report.

“Ninety percent of bird extinctions in recent centuries have been of species on islands,” said Stuart Butchart, BirdLife’s chief scientist and the paper’s lead author. “However, our results confirm that there is a growing wave of extinctions sweeping across the continents, driven mainly by habitat loss and degradation from unsustainable agriculture and logging.”

In the 2011 film, Blu was raised in captitvity and travels from Minnesota to Brazil with his proprietor to repopulate his species with the last wild female of their kind, Jewel. Yet, the motion picture was 11 years past the point of no return, the study found, as Jewel likely would’ve passed on in 2000.

That doesn’t mean all desire is lost for birds like Blu. The report says that despite the fact that the species is extinct in the wild, 60 to 80 Spix’s macaws still live in captivity.