Note 221 — Chapter VII

The presence of a megapode in the Nicobars, a genus that occurs also in the Indo-Malayan region, is the most interesting feature of the islands' avifauna. Dr A. R. Wallace says, in The Distribution of Animals: "The Megapodidæ are highly characteristic of the Australian region ... only sending two species beyond its limits (M. cumingi and M. lowi in the Philippine and North-West Borneo Islands), and another in the Nicobar Islands, separated by about 1800 miles from its nearest ally in Lombok. The Philippine species offers little difficulty, for these birds are found on the smallest islands and sandbanks, and can evidently pass over a few miles of sea with ease; but the Nicobar bird is a very different case, because none of the numerous intervening islands offer a single example of the family. Instead of being a well-marked or differentiated form, as we should expect to find if its remote and isolated habitat were due to natural causes, it so nearly resembles some of the closely allied species from the Moluccas and New Guinea, that had it been found with them it would not have been thought specifically distinct. I therefore believe that it is probably an introduction by the Malays (Dr Guillemard states that this bird is often seen in captivity in Malaysia), and that, owing to the absence of enemies and general suitability of conditions, it has thriven in the islands, and has become slightly differentiated from the parent stock."

The megapode also occurs on the Cocos Islands, but not on the Andamans intervening between these and the Nicobars. This may be explained either by the fact that it may formerly have existed on the Andamans, where it has been exterminated by the carnivorous palm-civet common in that group, or that, owing to the hostility of the natives, voyagers were deterred from stopping there and thus causing the introduction of the bird, a course they would be the less persuaded to attempt in that there were no coconuts to attract them.