Brazilian blue macaw parrot, from Disney movie ‘Rio’, now extinct in wild: Study

The Spix’s macaw is one of eight bird species, half of them in Brazil, confirmed extinct or suspected extinct in the report from BirdLife International published on Sunday, reports CNN.

A new study has found the Brazilian Spix’s macaw parrot has become extinct in the wild. The bird achieved onscreen fame as an animated character in the Disney movie “Rio” as a charming parrot named Blu.

A Green Macaw flies in the mountains near Manzanillo Beach, 280 km east of San Jose. (AFP File Photo/Representative image)

The Spix’s macaw is one of eight bird species, half of them in Brazil, confirmed extinct or suspected extinct in the report from BirdLife International published on Sunday, reports CNN.

But 60 to 80 Spix’s macaws still live in captivity.

Deforestation is a leading cause of the Spix’s macaw’s disappearance from its natural habitat, according to the report.

For the first time, extinctions on the mainland are outpacing those on islands, it said.

“Ninety per cent 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.”

The animated film follows Blu, a macaw from Minnesota on an adventure to Rio de Janeiro with the bird of his dreams.

But the movie was 11 years too late, the study found, as Jewel likely would have died in 2000.