Indian scientists are saving a rare bird — by getting them to mate with dummies
The great Indian bustard is critically endangered, but the Indian government has found a clever way of breeding the species in captivity.
With his slender beak, spindly legs, and soft cream-and-black feathers, almost three-month-old Arambh may look like a typical great Indian bustard chick. But Arambh, whose name means “beginning” in Hindi, is a special bird: He was the first of his kind to be born through artificial insemination, part of an urgent, decade-long push to save the critically endangered species.
Once a common sight strutting around the semi-arid grasslands and shrublands of the Indian subcontinent, these four-foot-tall birds sport a distinct black crown and large, sandy brown wings. With males reaching an impressive 26 pounds, the great Indian bustard was once a top contender for India's national bird, but it lost out to the Indian peafowl.
Yet due to decades of hunting, electrocution from power lines, egg poaching, and habitat loss, great Indian bustards have declined by about 82 percent over 47 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. When IUCN declared the species critically endangered in 2011, at fewer than 250 individuals, the group called for an “urgent acceleration in targeted conservation actions” before it was too late.
In response, the Rajasthan State government launched Project Great Indian Bustard in 2013, which has increased the bird’s numbers to about 195 over the past decade. About 150 live in the wild—most in northwestern India’s Thar Desert—and 45 are housed in Rajastan breeding centers, including Arambh’s mother and father, Toni and Suda, whose baby Arambh was born in October 2024.
“Our initial revival strategies involved collecting the wild-laid eggs and hatching them in incubators … to establish a founder population of the species for breeding in captivity,” either naturally or through artificial insemination, says Sutirtha Dutta, lead scientist with the Wildlife Institute of India, the government agency carrying out the conservation plan.
According to Dutta, the captive hatching success rate is 95 percent, with a viable founder population of 25 females and 20 males. The scientists hope to eventually release their offspring back into the wild.
“The recent success of AI has given us an additional reproductive tool not just to produce more chicks but also enhance their genetic diversity by selecting individuals of different parentage,” he says.
Artificial females
Artificial insemination technology is used to boost populations of many endangered species, including the Houbara bustard in the United Arab Emirates. The International Fund for Houbara Conservation in Abu Dhabi, which has bred a large number Houbara bustards, is providing specialized training in artificial insemination to the Project Great Indian Bustard team.
The technique, however, poses a challenge: How to get the male to release his semen. Transporting a male from one breeding center to the other then placing him in an enclosure with a female would be stressful, and prevent him from performing his usual courtship displays, says Tushna Karkaria, a project scientist and veterinarian with the bustard project.
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One promising solution is training male birds to mate with a wooden dummy, which resembles a 13-inch-tall squatting female bustard padded with foam and cloth. When a male starts displaying breeding behaviors, he’s put in front of a dummy, whose neck is flexible and moves like a female's in response to the male bustard's pecking.
Arambh’s father, Suda, “started playing around with it for a day or two after he got introduced and gradually started pecking its head as a mark of mating behavior,” says trainer Nikhila Purohit, senior project associate with the project, who adds there are nine male bustards in training to mate with dummies.
"When it eventually mounts the dummy, we quickly place a petri dish near its cloaca to collect the semen," says Purohit. The sperm is then artificially inseminated into a captive female deemed genetically distinct. (Read about an all-women ‘army’ protecting a rare bird in India.)
"This technique is particularly effective in preventing inbreeding within the small population" in the captive-breeding centers, says Asad Rahmani, an ornithologist and former director of the Bombay Natural History Society who is not involved in the project.
Cryopreservation facilities to store the semen could also be beneficial, he says, as it allows scientists more flexibility to impregnante females when they’re most receptive, he says.
‘Renewed hopes’
The success of artificial insemination—and the dummy technique—largely depends on how well the birds can follow the directions of their human trainers.
That’s why trainers allow the birds to imprint on them from birth, encouraging the animals to play and initiate touch, which creates a close bond.
"They learn to accept us as their mothers and a part of their species, and thus follow our commands," says Anjali Nagar, a senior project associate who has been rearing the chicks since the captive-breeding centers opened in 2019.
On the other hand, chicks destined to return to the wild will not be imprinted: They’ll be placed in large outdoor aviaries with shades blocking them from seeing people. At three to six months old, the young birds will be tagged with radio trackers and released into their natural habitat in Rajastan. (Read why birds matter, and are worth protecting.)
To promote the birds’ survival, the Rajasthan Forest Department is restoring habitat in Desert National Park and the military-run Pokhran field firing range, says Ashish Vyas, deputy conservator of the foreset department. Within these areas, the department has set aside nearly 70 square miles of protected grasslands, some of which are fenced to keep out feral dogs, pigs, or other predators that would feed on bustards or their eggs.
“We now have renewed hopes to revive the iconic species from the brink of extinction,” Vyas says.
