Researchers Takes selfie With Rare Bird Then Kills it… For Science!

Chris Filardi, the director of Pacific Programs at the American Museum of Natural History, was in the Solomon Islands with a team of researchers when they heard the call of the rarely ever seen male Moustached Kingfisher. After capturing the bird, Filardi took a selfie with it, and then had it euthanized.

Now, much to his surprise, the scientific community is a little peeved at him, calling what he did ‘unnecessary’ and ‘a horrific precedent.’

In his defense, Filardi says that killing animals for science is “standard practice” and that “it was okay to kill the bird for research because it isn’t an endangered species. “Though sightings and information about the bird are rare in the ornithological community, the bird itself is not. Elders of the local land-owning tribe (now living at lower elevations) relate stories of eating Mbarikuku, the local name for the bird; our local partners knew it as unremarkably common.”

Source: inhabitat