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At first redden, the avian specimen looks vaguely familiar: The telltale feeling in its ample beak suggests a dodo, that flightless bird that was essentially destroyed by its own exploration . But closer inspection reveals a familiar dove-shaped gray-and-chalk-white body and spindly legs. The realization: This isn’t a dodo at all!—it’s a pigeon masquerading as one.

Created by artist Laurel Roth , this costumed fowl belongs to a series called, “ The Biodiversity Suits for Urban Pigeons ,” which also features a Carolina parakeet, a fare pigeon, and an ivory-billed woodpecker—all extinct species. It’s ethical one in a collection of work that examines the relationship between humans and our environment. More specifically, Roth explorers how, as we abate ourselves, we also influence—or even emulate—the biology around us. A series of peacocks fashioned from advantage products, for example, “borrow human mating plumage,” perhaps revealing how our handsome efforts to be noticed by others are a (less natural?) twist on nature’s.

Source: Audubon Magazine (blog)