Sally Wasef (nearest) inspects mummified remains Emma Chapman

They were mummified in their millions. Stacks and stacks of sacred ibises were interred roughly 2,500 years ago as prayer offerings. At one site alone there are 1.75 million ibis mummies – where did the Egyptians get all these birds?

DNA locked inside some of the avian mummies has now been extracted and analysed. The findings suggest that the birds were not reared on large industrial-scale farms as described in ancient hieroglyphs, but rather captured from the wild before sacrifice and mummification.

Sally Wasef at Griffith University in Australia and …