It is believed that the population of Oriental pied hornbills in Pulau Ubin arose from a pair or more birds coming from Johor, Malaysia. The Hornbill Project Singapore is a conservation orientated project and the team is in the process of extracting DNA from the birds to compare their bloodlines. This will enable the team to determine if the existing birds originated from the
same pair or different pairs. 

The Oriental pied hornbill belongs to the Aves class and is part of the Coraciiformes order, where one can also find kingfishers, todies, momots, bee-eaters, rollers, ground-rollers, cuckoo-rollers, hoopoes and wood hoopoes. The 54 species of hornbills belong to the Bucerotidae family.