Rio; A Children's advocate and naturalist's perspective

Rating: 9/10 (25 April 2011)

My wife and I saw the animated movie, Rio, Friday night. We went to the 2-D version. As entertainment, we really enjoyed it and highly recommend it.
With our interest in children, nature, birds, specifically macaws, the movie did pretty good, with two sloppy biological errors. Rio is of course animated entertainment, not a National Geographic documentary, but Rio did touch upon two side stories; Black market parrot trade, and the blight so many children of Rio live in.
You've probably heard that "Rio" is about a pet Macaw from Minnesota that ends up in Rio de Janeiro. There, to be bred with "the last if their species".
Naturalist's perspective: Maybe we missed it, but we never heard the species of this macaw mentioned, despite the main human character being a researcher.
There are 23 species of macaw parrots (7 extinct), all found in South America and Central America. There are four species of macaws that are commonly referred to as the Great Blues. One has been extinct since 1960. The largest blue macaw, the Blue Hyacinth, is classified as vulnerable, but can still be found in the wild.
One assumes the movie is referring to the Spix macaw. Named after the German naturalist, Johann Baptist von Spix, this macaw truly is critically endangered. The leading book about it, "Spix's Macaw" by Tony Juniper, tells the interesting, tragic story. (Wikipedia: "List of macaws") While parrots are not as a group, tropical birds, just as the rainforest is the most diverse ecosystem, more parrots species are found in the rainforest then elsewhere. All macaw parrots are rainforest parrots.
As more/most pet macaws are hatched in pet industry breeding programs, reducing the impact on wild flocks, the Spix macaw is not surviving well. Because macaws are the largest parrots on the whole, as a group, they are all challenged because it's hard for these large birds to find large nesting cavities as deforestation continues.
The Spix macaw was always located only in a very small area of South America. Then as Europeans came to the New World and started grabbing macaws from the wild for display and as pets, the Spix macaw started disappearing in the wild. Poaching continues. Since 2000, the Spix is considered extinct in the wild.
Almost none of this came through the entertaining and colorful movie other than the main characters, Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) and Jewel (Anne Hathaway), are the last of their kind, and the researchers want to breed these two. To make an entertaining storyline conflict, while Blu quickly gets enamored when he meets Jewel, Jewel has other priorities; to escape back to the wild.
Child advocate view: Which brings in the second side story; (spoiler) a street child, Fernando (Jake T. Austin), who has no family, is the one who steals the two blue macaws from the research breeding program. Of course he's stealing them because such activity is his only source of income for this hopeless boy who lives in a shack in the rooftops of Rio. There he watches Rio's extravagant high-income people spending money like Carnival confetti. As you'll expect, in the end, Fernando redeems himself in helping to get the two macaws back.
SLOPPY BIOLOGICAL BLOOPERS: 1. Early scene; Blu's owner gives Blu his morning cup of hot chocolate. The writers could have had fun with this scene in many ways since parrots eat so many things that people eat, EXCEPT chocolate is poisonous to parrots! They should have used some other food item. 2. Parrot feet. Rio uses semi-realistic animation style. People had four fingers and thumb, not Mickey Mouse three-fingers-plus thumb. Feather details throughout the movie. You can see rust on a truck's license plate! Being realistic animation, how could the illustrators make the parrots three toes, instead illustrated with parrot's incredible hand-functioning, two-toes-forward, two-toes-back? Can't the animators count? VERY sloppy, and missing out on a fun opportunity.
OVERVIEW: It was a very fun, beautiful, funny, touching, full of music, entertaining movie that we highly recommend. - The bottom line for us is we hope more people think about and get involved with children's programs; locally, and worldwide, --And learn a little about the threat of species such as macaws, so that people will become open to learning about this arguably, most intelligent species on the planet (including humans). -For more, visit PiratesAndParrots.com and , Wikipedia: "List of macaws".