The dodo bird | Facts & Information

Discovery

The name Walgvogel was first used in the Diary of vice Admiral wybrand van Warwijck, who visited the island in 1598 and named it Mauritius. The etymology of the word is still unclear. Some attribute it to the Dutch word "dodoor" for "sloth", but it is more likely related to "dodaars (knot-burnt) referring to the bundle of feathers on the bird's hindwing.

The first record of the word "dodaerse" appeared in the Diary of Captain Willem van Westsanen in 1602. Thomas Herbert used the word dodo in 1627, but it is not known for certain if he was the first. In 1507 the Portuguese visited the island, but did not specify anything about the dodo. According to the Encarta dictionary and the Etymology Dictionary the word dodo derives from the Portuguese word "doudo" (now "doido") meaning crazy or stupid.

David Quammen considered the word dodo to be derived from the two sounds that the bird made "doo-doo". In 1606 Matelief De Jonge wrote an important description of the dodo and several other birds, animals and plants on the island.

Evolution

The Dodo is a close relative of the modern Dove and turtle, analyses suggest that its ancestors derived from rodrigues solitaire (which also became extinct) around the Paleogene-Neogene boundary. The same study has been interpreted to show that the S-E Asian pigeon, the Nicobar, is the closest living common ancestor of The dodo. Many bird bones have been found at different stages of maturity.

These findings were made public in December 2005 in the National Museum of history in Leiden. The Natural History Museum in Dublin and The History Museum at Oxford University, among others, hold a specimen assembled from these shattered remains. An egg belonging to the dodo bird is on display in the east London museum in South Africa. To date, the most intact remains are on display at the Natural History Museum at Oxford University.

The museum in Manchester has a small collection of bones belonging to the dodo bird on display. The remains of the last stuffed dodo bird were kept at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, but the specimen had deteriorated entirely and the museum director decided to give it up around 1755. In 2007, adventurers exploring a cave in Mauritius discovered the most complete and well-preserved dodo skeleton ever found.

According to the interpretation of some artists dodo had a gray plumage, a hooked beak of 23 centimeters, very small wings and a tuft of feathers on the rear extremity. The sternum is unsuitable for flight, these groundbirds evolved by taking advantage of an ecosystem on a predator-free island.

The traditional image of the dodo is of a fat and clumsy bird, hence the synonym of "Didus ineptus", but this view has been disputed in recent times. The opinion of scientists is that old drawings showed captive specimens "overweight". Mauritius was marked by both wet and dry seasons, and The Dodo probably "ate a lot" in the wet seasons to survive the coming dry season; contemporary reports speak of greedy birds.

In captivity food was found easily, therefore the birds became overweight very quickly. When the first humans arrived on Mauritius they brought with them animals not found on the island such as pigs, dogs, cats, rats and crab-eating macaques. Animals, especially pigs, destroyed the nests of the dodo bird, while humans destroyed the forests in which they made their nests, this having a devastating impact in the disappearance of the "giant hen". Although there are reports of the mass killing of dodo birds to supply ships, archaeological researchers have not found enough evidence to prove this.

Roberts & Solow state that "the disappearance of The Dodo is dated to the moment of the last sighting in 1662, reported by the shipwrecked sailor Volkert Evertsz" (Evertszoon), but many other sources suggest the year 1681. Roberts & Solow point out that before it was last seen in 1662 it was first seen in 1638, The dodo was probably already very rare as early as the 1660s, and thus a controversial report from 1674 cannot be disputed.

Statistical analysis of hunting records by Isaac Johannes Lamotius re-dates the extinction, estimated at 1693, with a 95% confidence interval of 1688-1715. Given more circumstantial evidence, such as travel reports and the lack of good reports after 1689, it is likely that the dodo became extinct before 1700; the last dodo died out a little more than a century after the species was discovered in 1581.

Few noticed the peculiarities of the endangered bird. In the early 19th century it seemed too strange a creature, and was considered by many to be a myth. With the discovery of the first batch of Dodo bones from the Mauritian swamp, Songes Mare, and reports written about them by George Clarke, a professor at Mahebourg, in 1865, interest in the bird was reignited. In the same year that Clarke began publishing his reports, the newly discovered bird was featured as a character in Lewis Carroll's book "Alice In Wonderland". With the popularity of the book, The Dodo became the established and easily recognizable symbol of extinction.

The Dodo Bird is used by many environmental organizations that promote the protection of endangered species, such as the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and The Jersey Zoological Park, founded by Gerald Durrell.

The Dodo Bird is one of the most famous extinct animals and its singular appearance has led to its use in literature and popular culture to symbolize a concept, as has the phrase "dead as a dodo" or "walking in the footsteps of The dodo".