Negros Fruit Dove's Sole Specimen

In 1953, a Filipino zoologist named Dioscoro Rabor shot the only known female Negros fruit dove near Pula on the slopes of Mount Kanlaon in the Philippines. He also shot a second bird presumed to be her mate, but he could not recover it from the undergrowth, leaving the female's preserved skin at Yale University's Peabody Museum as the species' only specimen. Scientists have never definitively recorded another Negros fruit dove, although a local hunter claimed to have shot one in the 1990s. The IUCN lists the species as Critically Endangered, but experts believe any surviving population numbers fewer than 50 birds.

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