The animated film Rio Adventure, released in 2011, set off a parrot fever. The protagonist of the film, Blue, is a parrot with blue feathers, and its prototype is a small blue macaw. The species has been listed as critically endangered since 1994, and the cartoon has made it known.
Not long ago, the International Bird Alliance of the Ecological Conservation Union announced through an official report that the baby blue macaw has become extinct in the wild, but not recently, but as early as 2000 or so.
The little blue macaw was discovered by the zoologist Spieks in 1817 and the first specimen was made. This bird lives in the tropical rainforest areas of Central and South America and is large in size and has a long tail, with the largest body length reaching up to one meter.
According to BirdLife International chief scientist Stuart Butchart, 90 percent of the world's birds go extinct, largely due to "loss and degradation of the ecosystem caused by unsustainable agriculture and logging." In 1956, a new species of bee appeared in Brazil, which was so fierce that many small blue macaws were stung by them. Many poachers have caught this parrot on a large scale and sold it to private collectors on the market, and according to statistics, about 400,000 to 800,000 small blue macaws are captured by humans every year.
By 1986, there were only 3 wild little blue macaws. The following year, two of them were captured again, leaving only one single male. The male could not find a companion of his kind, and could only breed with a wild purple and blue macaw and give birth to two baby parrots. In 2000, the male parrot was missing, so it is thought that the baby blue macaw went extinct at that time.
However, the study notes that although the wild species has gone extinct, there are still 60 to 80 captive parrots, which are at risk of degradation due to inbreeding and slow rates of captivity.