As for the question about whether the Thao, which had only 300 surviving members, was a lowland tribe, in 1953 Chen Chi-lu devised a plan to trace their roots and determined that the Thao belonged to neither the Bunun nor the Tsou. In 2001, the Thao were officially recognized by the government as Taiwan's tenth Aboriginal tribe.
人數僅剩三百人的邵族，究竟是不是平埔族，其考究可溯源自一九五三年人類學者陳奇祿主持的計劃，而後台大確定邵族不能歸為布農族或鄒族，應該是獨立的一族，至二○○一年，邵族才正式被政府核定為台灣原住民的第十族。