The dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') is an
extinct flightless bird
Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species, including the well known ratites (ostriches, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is the ...
that was
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...
to the island of
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...
, which is east of
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...
in the
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...
. The dodo's closest
genetic relative
Consanguinity ("blood relation", from Latin '' consanguinitas'') is the characteristic of having a kinship with another person (being descended from a common ancestor).
Many jurisdictions have laws prohibiting people who are related by blood fr ...
was the also-extinct
Rodrigues solitaire
The Rodrigues solitaire (''Pezophaps solitaria'') is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Rodrigues, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Genetically within the family of pigeons and doves, it was most closely relate ...
. The two formed the
subfamily Raphinae
The Raphinae are a clade of extinct flightless birds formerly called didines or didine birds. They inhabited the Mascarene Islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, but became extinct through hunting by humans and predation by introduced non-native ...
, a clade of extinct flightless birds that were a part of the
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
which includes
pigeons and doves. The closest
living
Living or The Living may refer to:
Common meanings
*Life, a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms
** Living species, one that is not extinct
*Personal life, the course of an individual human's life
* ...
relative of the dodo is the
Nicobar pigeon
The Nicobar pigeon (''Caloenas nicobarica'', Car: ') is a bird found on small islands and in coastal regions from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, east through the Malay Archipelago, to the Solomons and Palau. It is the only living membe ...
. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of
Réunion, but it is now believed that this assumption was merely confusion based on the also-extinct
Réunion ibis
The Réunion ibis or Réunion sacred ibis (''Threskiornis solitarius'') is an extinct species of ibis that was endemic to the volcanic island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The first subfossil remains were found in 1974, and the ibis was firs ...
and paintings of white dodos.
Subfossil remains show the dodo was about tall and may have weighed in the wild. The dodo's appearance in life is evidenced only by drawings, paintings, and written accounts from the 17th century. Since these portraits vary considerably, and since only some of the illustrations are known to have been drawn from live specimens, the dodos' exact appearance in life remains unresolved, and little is known about its behaviour. It has been depicted with brownish-grey
plumage, yellow feet, a tuft of tail feathers, a grey, naked head, and a black, yellow, and green beak. It used
gizzard stone
A gastrolith, also called a stomach stone or gizzard stone, is a rock held inside a gastrointestinal tract. Gastroliths in some species are retained in the muscular gizzard and used to grind food in animals lacking suitable grinding teeth. In oth ...
s to help
digest its food, which is thought to have included fruits, and its main
habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
is believed to have been the woods in the drier coastal areas of Mauritius. One account states its
clutch consisted of a single egg. It is presumed that the dodo became flightless because of the ready availability of abundant food sources and a relative absence of predators on Mauritius. Though the dodo has historically been portrayed as being fat and clumsy, it is now thought to have been well-adapted for its ecosystem.
The first recorded mention of the dodo was by Dutch sailors in 1598. In the following years, the bird was hunted by sailors and
invasive species, while its habitat was being destroyed. The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662. Its extinction was not immediately noticed, and some considered it to be a
myth. In the 19th century, research was conducted on a small quantity of remains of four specimens that had been brought to Europe in the early 17th century. Among these is a dried head, the only soft tissue of the dodo that remains today. Since then, a large amount of subfossil material has been collected on Mauritius, mostly from the
Mare aux Songes
The Mare aux Songes () swamp is a lagerstätte located close to the sea in south eastern Mauritius. Many subfossils of recently extinct animals have accumulated in the swamp, which was once a lake, and some of the first subfossil remains of dodos w ...
swamp. The extinction of the dodo within less than a century of its discovery called attention to the previously unrecognised problem of human involvement in the disappearance of entire
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
. The dodo achieved widespread recognition from its role in the story of ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creature ...
'', and it has since become a fixture in popular culture, often as a
symbol of extinction and
obsolescence
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...
.
Taxonomy
![Copenhagen dodo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Copenhagen_dodo.jpg)
The dodo was variously declared a small
ostrich
Ostriches are large flightless birds of the genus ''Struthio'' in the order Struthioniformes, part of the infra-class Palaeognathae, a diverse group of flightless birds also known as ratites that includes the emus, rheas, and kiwis. There ...
, a
rail
Rail or rails may refer to:
Rail transport
*Rail transport and related matters
*Rail (rail transport) or railway lines, the running surface of a railway
Arts and media Film
* ''Rails'' (film), a 1929 Italian film by Mario Camerini
* ''Rail'' ( ...
, an
albatross, or a
vulture
A vulture is a bird of prey that scavenges on carrion. There are 23 extant species of vulture (including Condors). Old World vultures include 16 living species native to Europe, Africa, and Asia; New World vultures are restricted to North and ...
, by early scientists. In 1842, Danish zoologist
Johannes Theodor Reinhardt
Johannes Theodor Reinhardt (3 December 1816, in Copenhagen – 23 October 1882, in Frederiksberg) was a Danish zoologist and herpetologist. The son of Johannes Christopher Hagemann Reinhardt.
Biography
He participated as botanist in the firs ...
proposed that dodos were ground
pigeons
Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...
, based on studies of a dodo skull he had discovered in the collection of the
Natural History Museum of Denmark
The Natural History Museum of Denmark ( da, Statens Naturhistoriske Museum) is a natural history museum located in Copenhagen, Denmark. It was created as a 1 January 2004 merger of Copenhagen's Zoological Museum, Geological Museum, Botanical Muse ...
. This view was met with ridicule, but was later supported by English naturalists
Hugh Edwin Strickland
Hugh Edwin Strickland (2 March 1811 – 14 September 1853) was an English geologist, ornithologist, naturalist and systematist. Through the British Association, he proposed a series of rules for the nomenclature of organisms in zoology, known as ...
and
Alexander Gordon Melville
Alexander Gordon Melville (1819–1901) was an Irish comparative anatomist, best known for his work on the dodo. He was Professor of Natural History at Queen's College Galway, from 1849 to 1882.
Life
Melville graduated M.D. at the University of E ...
in their 1848
monograph ''The Dodo and Its Kindred'', which attempted to separate
myth from reality. After
dissecting
Dissection (from Latin ' "to cut to pieces"; also called anatomization) is the dismembering of the body of a deceased animal or plant to study its anatomical structure. Autopsy is used in pathology and forensic medicine to determine the cause of ...
the
preserved head and foot of the specimen at the
Oxford University Museum
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes known simply as the Oxford University Museum or OUMNH, is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It a ...
and comparing it with the few remains then available of the extinct
Rodrigues solitaire
The Rodrigues solitaire (''Pezophaps solitaria'') is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Rodrigues, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Genetically within the family of pigeons and doves, it was most closely relate ...
(''Pezophaps solitaria'') they concluded that the two were closely related. Strickland stated that although not identical, these birds shared many distinguishing features of the leg bones, otherwise known only in pigeons.
Strickland and Melville established that the dodo was
anatomically similar to pigeons in many features. They pointed to the very short
keratinous
Keratin () is one of a family of structural fibrous proteins also known as ''scleroproteins''. Alpha-keratin (α-keratin) is a type of keratin found in vertebrates. It is the key structural material making up scales, hair, nails, feathers, ho ...
portion of the
beak
The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure found mostly in birds, but also in turtles, non-avian dinosaurs and a few mammals. A beak is used for eating, preening, manipulating objects, killing prey, fighting, probing for foo ...
, with its long, slender, naked basal part. Other pigeons also have bare skin around their eyes, almost reaching their beak, as in dodos. The forehead was high in relation to the beak, and the
nostril
A nostril (or naris , plural ''nares'' ) is either of the two orifices of the nose. They enable the entry and exit of air and other gasses through the nasal cavities. In birds and mammals, they contain branched bones or cartilages called turbi ...
was located low on the middle of the beak and surrounded by skin, a combination of features shared only with pigeons. The legs of the dodo were generally more similar to those of
terrestrial
Terrestrial refers to things related to land or the planet Earth.
Terrestrial may also refer to:
* Terrestrial animal, an animal that lives on land opposed to living in water, or sometimes an animal that lives on or near the ground, as opposed to ...
pigeons than of other birds, both in their
scales
Scale or scales may refer to:
Mathematics
* Scale (descriptive set theory), an object defined on a set of points
* Scale (ratio), the ratio of a linear dimension of a model to the corresponding dimension of the original
* Scale factor, a number w ...
and in their skeletal features. Depictions of the large
crop
A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydropon ...
hinted at a relationship with pigeons, in which this feature is more developed than in other birds. Pigeons generally have very small
clutches
A clutch is a mechanical device that engages and disengages power transmission, especially from a drive shaft to a driven shaft. In the simplest application, clutches connect and disconnect two rotating shafts (drive shafts or line shafts) ...
, and the dodo is said to have laid a single egg. Like pigeons, the dodo lacked the
vomer
The vomer (; lat, vomer, lit=ploughshare) is one of the unpaired facial bones of the skull. It is located in the midsagittal line, and articulates with the sphenoid, the ethmoid, the left and right palatine bones, and the left and right max ...
and
septum of the nostrils, and it shared details in the
mandible
In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movable bone ...
, the
zygomatic bone
In the human skull, the zygomatic bone (from grc, ζῠγόν, zugón, yoke), also called cheekbone or malar bone, is a paired irregular bone which articulates with the maxilla, the temporal bone, the sphenoid bone and the frontal bone. It is s ...
, the
palate
The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity.
A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
, and the
hallux
Toes are the digits (fingers) of the foot of a tetrapod. Animal species such as cats that walk on their toes are described as being '' digitigrade''. Humans, and other animals that walk on the soles of their feet, are described as being '' pl ...
. The dodo differed from other pigeons mainly in the small size of the wings and the large size of the beak in proportion to the rest of the
cranium.
Throughout the 19th century, several species were classified as
congeneric
Congener may refer to:
* A thing or person of the same kind as another, or of the same group.
* Congener (biology), organisms within the same genus.
* Congener (chemistry), related chemicals, e.g., elements in the same group of the periodic table. ...
with the dodo, including the Rodrigues solitaire and the
Réunion solitaire, as ''Didus solitarius'' and ''Raphus solitarius'', respectively (''Didus'' and ''Raphus'' being names for the dodo genus used by different authors of the time). An atypical 17th-century description of a dodo and bones found on Rodrigues, now known to have belonged to the Rodrigues solitaire, led
Abraham Dee Bartlett
Abraham Dee Bartlett (27 October 1812 – 7 May 1897) was a British taxidermist and an expert on captive animals. A superintendent of the London Zoo, he was a prominent observer of animal life and a zoologist who became a popular authority on wi ...
to name a new species, ''Didus nazarenus'', in 1852. Based on solitaire remains, it is now a synonym of that species. Crude drawings of the
red rail
The red rail (''Aphanapteryx bonasia'') is an extinct species of flightless rail. It was endemic to the Mascarene island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It had a close relative on Rodrigues island, the likewise extinct R ...
of
Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It ...
were also misinterpreted as dodo species; ''Didus broeckii'' and ''Didus herberti''.
For many years the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire were placed in a
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
of their own, the Raphidae (formerly Dididae), because their exact relationships with other pigeons were unresolved. Each was also placed in its own
monotypic
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...
family (Raphidae and Pezophapidae, respectively), as it was thought that they had
evolved their similarities independently.
Osteological
Osteology () is the scientific study of bones, practised by osteologists. A subdiscipline of anatomy, anthropology, and paleontology, osteology is the detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, microbone morphology, func ...
and
DNA analysis has since led to the dissolution of the family Raphidae, and the dodo and solitaire are now placed in their own subfamily, Raphinae, within the family Columbidae.
Evolution
In 2002, American geneticist
Beth Shapiro
Beth Alison Shapiro (born 1976) is an American evolutionary molecular biologist. She is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Shapiro's work has centered on the analysis of ...
and colleagues analysed the DNA of the dodo for the first time. Comparison of
mitochondrial
cytochrome ''b'' and 12S
rRNA
Ribosomal ribonucleic acid (rRNA) is a type of non-coding RNA which is the primary component of ribosomes, essential to all cells. rRNA is a ribozyme which carries out protein synthesis in ribosomes. Ribosomal RNA is transcribed from ribosoma ...
sequences
In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called t ...
isolated from a
tarsal of the Oxford specimen and a
femur
The femur (; ), or thigh bone, is the proximal bone of the hindlimb in tetrapod vertebrates. The head of the femur articulates with the acetabulum in the pelvic bone forming the hip joint, while the distal part of the femur articulates wit ...
of a Rodrigues solitaire confirmed their close relationship and their placement within the Columbidae. The genetic evidence was interpreted as showing the Southeast Asian
Nicobar pigeon
The Nicobar pigeon (''Caloenas nicobarica'', Car: ') is a bird found on small islands and in coastal regions from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India, east through the Malay Archipelago, to the Solomons and Palau. It is the only living membe ...
(''Caloenas nicobarica'') to be their closest living relative, followed by the
crowned pigeons (''Goura'') of
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
, and the superficially dodo-like
tooth-billed pigeon
The tooth-billed pigeon (''Didunculus strigirostris''), also known as the ''manumea'', is a large pigeon found only in Samoa. It is the only living species of genus '' Didunculus''. A related extinct species, the Tongan tooth-billed pigeon (''D ...
(''Didunculus strigirostris'') from
Samoa
Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa; sm, Sāmoa, and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands ( Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands ( Manono and Apolima); ...
(its scientific name refers to its dodo-like beak). This
clade consists of generally ground-dwelling island endemic pigeons. The following
cladogram
A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...
shows the dodo's closest relationships within the Columbidae, based on Shapiro et al., 2002:
A similar cladogram was published in 2007, inverting the placement of ''Goura'' and ''Didunculus'' and including the
pheasant pigeon
The pheasant pigeon (''Otidiphaps nobilis'') is a species of large terrestrial pigeon. It is the only species of the monotypic genus ''Otidiphaps''. The pheasant pigeon is found in the primary rainforests of New Guinea and nearby islands. It rang ...
(''Otidiphaps nobilis'') and the
thick-billed ground pigeon (''Trugon terrestris'') at the base of the clade. The DNA used in these studies was obtained from the Oxford specimen, and since this material is degraded, and no usable DNA has been extracted from subfossil remains, these findings still need to be independently verified. Based on behavioural and morphological evidence, Jolyon C. Parish proposed that the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire should be placed in the subfamily
Gourinae
The crowned pigeons (''Goura'') is a genus of birds in the family Columbidae. It contains four large species of pigeon that are endemic to the island of New Guinea and a few surrounding islands. The species are extremely similar to each other in ...
along with the ''Goura'' pigeons and others, in agreement with the genetic evidence. In 2014, DNA of the only known specimen of the recently extinct
spotted green pigeon (''Caloenas maculata'') was analysed, and it was found to be a close relative of the Nicobar pigeon, and thus also the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire.
![NICOBAR PIGEON (8551073077)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/NICOBAR_PIGEON_%288551073077%29.jpg)
The 2002 study indicated that the ancestors of the dodo and the solitaire diverged around the
Paleogene-
Neogene boundary, about 23.03 million years ago. The
Mascarene Islands
The Mascarene Islands (, ) or Mascarenes or Mascarenhas Archipelago is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar consisting of the islands belonging to the Republic of Mauritius as well as the French department of Réunion. Their ...
(Mauritius,
Réunion, and
Rodrigues), are of
volcanic
A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.
On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...
origin and are less than 10 million years old. Therefore, the ancestors of both birds probably remained capable of flight for a considerable time after the separation of their
lineage. The Nicobar and spotted green pigeon were placed at the base of a lineage leading to the Raphinae, which indicates the
flightless
Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species, including the well known ratites (ostriches, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is the ...
raphines had ancestors that were able to fly, were semi-terrestrial, and inhabited islands. This in turn supports the hypothesis that the ancestors of those birds reached the Mascarene islands by
island hopping
Leapfrogging, also known as island hopping, was a military strategy employed by the Allies in the Pacific War against the Empire of Japan during World War II.
The key idea is to bypass heavily fortified enemy islands instead of trying to captu ...
from South Asia.
The lack of
mammalian
herbivores competing for resources on these islands allowed the solitaire and the dodo to attain
very large sizes and flightlessness. Despite its divergent skull morphology and adaptations for larger size, many features of its skeleton remained similar to those of smaller, flying pigeons. Another large, flightless pigeon, the
Viti Levu giant pigeon
The Viti Levu giant pigeon or Fiji giant ground pigeon (''Natunaornis gigoura'') is an extinct flightless pigeon of Viti Levu, the largest island in Fiji. It was only slightly smaller than the dodo (''Raphus cucullatus'') and Rodrigues solitair ...
(''Natunaornis gigoura''), was described in 2001 from
subfossil material from
Fiji. It was only slightly smaller than the dodo and the solitaire, and it too is thought to have been related to the crowned pigeons.
Etymology
![View of the Mauritius roadstead - engraving](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/View_of_the_Mauritius_roadstead_-_engraving.jpg)
One of the original names for the dodo was the Dutch "''Walghvoghel''", first used in the journal of Dutch
Vice Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck, who visited Mauritius during the Second Dutch Expedition to Indonesia in 1598. ''Walghe'' means "tasteless", "insipid", or "sickly", and means "bird". The name was translated by Jakob Friedlib into German as ''Walchstök'' or ''Walchvögel''. The original Dutch report titled ''Waarachtige Beschryving'' was lost, but the English translation survived:
Another account from that voyage, perhaps the first to mention the dodo, states that the Portuguese referred to them as penguins. The meaning may not have been derived from ''
penguin'' (the Portuguese referred to those birds as "''fotilicaios''" at the time), but from ''
pinion'', a reference to the small wings. The crew of the Dutch ship ''Gelderland'' referred to the bird as "Dronte" (meaning "swollen") in 1602, a name that is still used in some languages. This crew also called them "griff-eendt" and "kermisgans", in reference to
fowl
Fowl are birds belonging to one of two biological orders, namely the gamefowl or landfowl (Galliformes) and the waterfowl (Anseriformes). Anatomical and molecular similarities suggest these two groups are close evolutionary relatives; together ...
fattened for the
Kermesse festival in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , , , lit. ''The Dam on the River Amstel'') is the capital and most populous city of the Netherlands, with The Hague being the seat of government. It has a population of 907,976 within the city proper, 1,558,755 in the urban ar ...
, which was held the day after they anchored on Mauritius.
![Lophopsittacus](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/Lophopsittacus.mauritianus.jpg)
The
etymology
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
of the word ''dodo'' is unclear. Some ascribe it to the Dutch word ''dodoor'' for "sluggard", but it is more probably related to ''Dodaars'', which means either "fat-arse" or "knot-arse", referring to the knot of feathers on the hind end. The first record of the word ''Dodaars'' is in Captain Willem Van West-Zanen's journal in 1602. The English writer
Sir Thomas Herbert
Sir Thomas Herbert, 1st Baronet (1606–1682), was an English traveller, historian and a gentleman of the bedchamber of King Charles I while Charles was in the custody of Parliament (from 1647 until the king's execution in January 1649).
Biogr ...
was the first to use the word ''dodo'' in print in his 1634
travelogue
Travelogue may refer to:
Genres
* Travel literature, a record of the experiences of an author travelling
* Travel documentary
A travel documentary is a documentary film, television program, or online series that describes travel in general or ...
claiming it was referred to as such by the Portuguese, who had visited Mauritius in 1507. Another Englishman, Emmanuel Altham, had used the word in a 1628 letter in which he also claimed its origin was Portuguese. The name "dodar" was introduced into English at the same time as dodo, but was only used until the 18th century. As far as is known, the Portuguese never mentioned the bird. Nevertheless, some sources still state that the word ''dodo'' derives from the
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
word ''doudo'' (currently ''doido''), meaning "fool" or "crazy". It has also been suggested that ''dodo'' was an
onomatopoeic approximation of the bird's call, a two-note pigeon-like sound resembling "doo-doo".
The Latin name ''cucullatus'' ("hooded") was first used by
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg
Juan Eusebio Nieremberg y Ottín (1595 – 7 April 1658) was a Spanish Jesuit and mystic.
Nieremberg was born and died in Madrid, but his parents were German. He studied the classics at the Royal Court, he studied science at Alcalá and ca ...
in 1635 as ''
Cygnus cucullatus'', in reference to
Carolus Clusius
Charles de l'Écluse, L'Escluse, or Carolus Clusius (19 February 1526 – 4 April 1609), seigneur de Watènes, was an Artois doctor and pioneering botanist, perhaps the most influential of all 16th-century scientific horticulturists.
Life
Clu ...
's 1605 depiction of a dodo. In his 18th-century classic work ''
Systema Naturae'',
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his Nobility#Ennoblement, ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalise ...
used ''cucullatus'' as the specific name, but combined it with the genus name ''Struthio'' (ostrich).
Mathurin Jacques Brisson
Mathurin Jacques Brisson (; 30 April 1723 – 23 June 1806) was a French zoologist and natural philosopher.
Brisson was born at Fontenay-le-Comte. The earlier part of his life was spent in the pursuit of natural history; his published works ...
coined the genus name ''Raphus'' (referring to the
bustard
Bustards, including floricans and korhaans, are large, terrestrial birds living mainly in dry grassland areas and on the steppes of the Old World. They range in length from . They make up the family Otididae (, formerly known as Otidae). Bustar ...
s) in 1760, resulting in the current name ''Raphus cucullatus''. In 1766, Linnaeus coined the new binomial ''Didus ineptus'' (meaning "inept dodo"). This has become a
synonym of the earlier name because of
nomenclatural priority.
Description
As no complete dodo specimens exist, its external appearance, such as plumage and colouration, is hard to determine. Illustrations and written accounts of encounters with the dodo between its discovery and its extinction (1598–1662) are the primary evidence for its external appearance. According to most representations, the dodo had greyish or brownish
plumage, with lighter
primary feathers
Flight feathers (''Pennae volatus'') are the long, stiff, asymmetrically shaped, but symmetrically paired pennaceous feathers on the wings or tail of a bird; those on the wings are called remiges (), singular remex (), while those on the tai ...
and a tuft of curly light feathers high on its rear end. The head was grey and naked, the beak green, black and yellow, and the legs were stout and yellowish, with black claws. A study of the few remaining feathers on the Oxford specimen head showed that they were
pennaceous rather than
plumaceous (downy) and most similar to those of other pigeons.
Subfossil remains and remnants of the birds that were brought to Europe in the 17th century show that dodos were very large birds, up to tall. The bird was
sexually dimorphic
Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...
; males were larger and had proportionally longer beaks. Weight estimates have varied from study to study. In 1993,
Bradley C. Livezey
Bradley Curtis Livezey (June 15, 1954 – February 8, 2011) was an American ornithologist with scores of publications. His main research included the evolution of flightless birds, the systematics of birds, and the ecology and behaviour of steame ...
proposed that males would have weighed and females . Also in 1993, Andrew C. Kitchener attributed a high contemporary weight estimate and the roundness of dodos depicted in Europe to these birds having been overfed in captivity; weights in the wild were estimated to have been in the range of , and fattened birds could have weighed . A 2011 estimate by Angst and colleagues gave an average weight as low as . This has also been questioned, and there is still controversy over weight estimates. A 2016 study estimated the weight at , based on
CT scans of composite skeletons. It has also been suggested that the weight depended on the season, and that individuals were fat during cool seasons, but less so during hot.
![DodoMansur](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/DodoMansur.jpg)
The skull of the dodo differed much from those of other pigeons, especially in being more robust, the bill having a hooked tip, and in having a short cranium compared to the jaws. The upper bill was nearly twice as long as the cranium, which was short compared to those of its closest pigeon relatives. The openings of the bony nostrils were elongated along the length of the beak, and they contained no bony septum. The cranium (excluding the beak) was wider than it was long, and the
frontal bone
The frontal bone is a bone in the human skull. The bone consists of two portions.'' Gray's Anatomy'' (1918) These are the vertically oriented squamous part, and the horizontally oriented orbital part, making up the bony part of the forehead, pa ...
formed a dome-shape, with the highest point above the hind part of the eye sockets. The skull sloped downwards at the back. The eye sockets occupied much of the hind part of the skull. The
sclerotic rings
Sclerotic rings are rings of bone found in the eyes of many animals in several groups of vertebrates, except for mammals and crocodilians. They can be made up of single bones or multiple segments and take their name from the sclera. They are b ...
inside the eye were formed by eleven ossicles (small bones), similar to the amount in other pigeons. The mandible was slightly curved, and each half had a single
fenestra
A fenestra (fenestration; plural fenestrae or fenestrations) is any small opening or pore, commonly used as a term in the biological sciences. It is the Latin word for "window", and is used in various fields to describe a pore in an anatomical st ...
(opening), as in other pigeons.
The dodo had about nineteen presynsacral vertebrae (those of the neck and
thorax
The thorax or chest is a part of the anatomy of humans, mammals, and other tetrapod animals located between the neck and the abdomen. In insects, crustaceans, and the extinct trilobites, the thorax is one of the three main divisions of the cre ...
, including three fused into a
notarium
Notarium or os dorsale is a bone consisting of the fused vertebra of the shoulder in birds and some pterosaurs. The structure helps brace the chest against the forces generated by the wings. In birds, the vertebrae are only in contact with adjac ...
), sixteen
synsacral vertebrae (those of the
lumbar region
In tetrapod anatomy, lumbar is an adjective that means ''of or pertaining to the abdominal segment of the torso, between the diaphragm and the sacrum.''
The lumbar region is sometimes referred to as the lower spine, or as an area of the back ...
and
sacrum), six free tail (caudal) vertebrae, and a
pygostyle
Pygostyle describes a skeletal condition in which the final few caudal vertebrae are fused into a single ossification, supporting the tail feathers and musculature. In modern birds, the rectrices attach to these. The pygostyle is the main compone ...
. The neck had well-developed areas for muscle and ligament attachment, probably to support the heavy skull and beak. On each side, it had six ribs, four of which articulated with the
sternum
The sternum or breastbone is a long flat bone located in the central part of the chest. It connects to the ribs via cartilage and forms the front of the rib cage, thus helping to protect the heart, lungs, and major blood vessels from injury. Sha ...
through sternal ribs. The sternum was large, but small in relation to the body compared to those of much smaller pigeons that are able to fly. The sternum was highly
pneumatic, broad, and relatively thick in cross-section. The bones of the
pectoral girdle
The shoulder girdle or pectoral girdle is the set of bones in the appendicular skeleton which connects to the arm on each side. In humans it consists of the clavicle and scapula; in those species with three bones in the shoulder, it consists of ...
, shoulder blades, and wing bones were reduced in size compared to those of flighted pigeon, and were more gracile compared to those of the Rodrigues solitaire, but none of the individual skeletal components had disappeared. The
carpometacarpus
The carpometacarpus is a bone found in the hands of birds. It results from the fusion of the carpal and metacarpal bone, and is essentially a single fused bone between the wrist and the knuckles. It is a smallish bone in most birds, generally flat ...
of the dodo was more robust than that of the solitaire, however. The pelvis was wider than that of the solitaire and other relatives, yet was comparable to the proportions in some smaller, flighted pigeons. Most of the leg bones were more robust than those of extant pigeons and the solitaire, but the length proportions were little different.
Many of the skeletal features that distinguish the dodo and the Rodrigues solitaire, its closest relative, from other pigeons have been attributed to their flightlessness. The pelvic elements were thicker than those of flighted pigeons to support the higher weight, and the
pectoral
Pectoral may refer to:
* The chest region and anything relating to it.
* Pectoral cross, a cross worn on the chest
* a decorative, usually jeweled version of a gorget
* Pectoral (Ancient Egypt), a type of jewelry worn in ancient Egypt
* Pectorali ...
region and the small wings were
paedomorphic
Neoteny (), also called juvenilization,Montagu, A. (1989). Growing Young. Bergin & Garvey: CT. is the delaying or slowing of the physiological, or somatic, development of an organism, typically an animal. Neoteny is found in modern humans compare ...
, meaning that they were underdeveloped and retained juvenile features. The skull, trunk and
pelvic
The pelvis (plural pelves or pelvises) is the lower part of the trunk, between the abdomen and the thighs (sometimes also called pelvic region), together with its embedded skeleton (sometimes also called bony pelvis, or pelvic skeleton).
The p ...
limbs were
peramorphic
In evolutionary developmental biology, heterochrony is any genetically controlled difference in the timing, rate, or duration of a developmental process in an organism compared to its ancestors or other organisms. This leads to changes in the si ...
, meaning that they changed considerably with age. The dodo shared several other traits with the Rodrigues solitaire, such as features of the skull, pelvis, and sternum, as well as their large size. It differed in other aspects, such as being more robust and shorter than the solitaire, having a larger skull and beak, a rounded
skull roof, and smaller
orbits
In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...
. The dodo's neck and legs were proportionally shorter, and it did not possess an equivalent to the knob present on the solitaire's wrists.
Contemporary descriptions
Most contemporary descriptions of the dodo are found in
ship's logs and journals of the Dutch East India Company vessels that docked in Mauritius when the
Dutch Empire ruled the island. These records were used as guides for future voyages. Few contemporary accounts are reliable, as many seem to be based on earlier accounts, and none were written by scientists. One of the earliest accounts, from van Warwijck's 1598 journal, describes the bird as follows:
![Saftleven dodo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cf/Saftleven_dodo.jpg)
One of the most detailed descriptions is by Herbert in ''A Relation of Some Yeares Travaille into Afrique and the Greater Asia'' from 1634:
Contemporary depictions
![Dodo (VOC Gelderland, 1602)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Dodo_%28VOC_Gelderland%2C_1602%29.jpg)
The travel journal of the Dutch ship ''Gelderland'' (1601–1603), rediscovered in the 1860s, contains the only known sketches of living or recently killed specimens drawn on Mauritius. They have been attributed to the professional artist Joris Joostensz Laerle, who also drew other now-extinct Mauritian birds, and to a second, less refined artist. Apart from these sketches, it is unknown how many of the twenty or so 17th-century illustrations of the dodos were drawn from life or from stuffed specimens, which affects their reliability. Since dodos are otherwise only known from limited physical remains and descriptions, contemporary artworks are important to reconstruct their appearance in life. While there has been an effort since the mid-19 century to list all historical illustrations of dodos, previously unknown depictions continue to be discovered occasionally.
The traditional image of the dodo is of a very fat and clumsy bird, but this view may be exaggerated. The general opinion of scientists today is that many old European depictions were based on overfed captive birds or crudely stuffed specimens. It has also been suggested that the images might show dodos with puffed feathers, as part of display behaviour. The Dutch painter
Roelant Savery
Roelant Savery (or ''Roeland(t) Maertensz Saverij'', or ''de Savery'', or many variants; 1576 – buried 25 February 1639) was a Flanders-born Dutch Golden Age painter.
Life
Savery was born in Kortrijk. Like so many other artists, he belonge ...
was the most prolific and influential illustrator of the dodo, having made at least twelve depictions, often showing it in the lower corners. A famous painting of his from 1626, now called ''Edwards's Dodo'' as it was once owned by the ornithologist
George Edwards, has since become the standard image of a dodo. It is housed in the
Natural History Museum
A natural history museum or museum of natural history is a scientific institution with natural history collections that include current and historical records of animals, plants, fungi, ecosystems, geology, paleontology, climatology, and more. ...
, London. The image shows a particularly fat bird and is the source for many other dodo illustrations.
![Edwards' Dodo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Edwards%27_Dodo.jpg)
An Indian
Mughal painting
Mughal painting is a style of painting on paper confined to miniatures either as book illustrations or as single works to be kept in albums ( muraqqa), from the territory of the Mughal Empire in South Asia. It emerged from Persian miniature pai ...
rediscovered in the
Hermitage Museum
The State Hermitage Museum ( rus, Государственный Эрмитаж, r=Gosudarstvennyj Ermitaž, p=ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)ɨj ɪrmʲɪˈtaʂ, links=no) is a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is the largest ...
,
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
, in 1955 shows a dodo along with native Indian birds. It depicts a slimmer, brownish bird, and its discoverer Aleksander Iwanow and British palaeontologist
Julian Hume
Julian Pender Hume (born 3 March 1960) is an English palaeontologist, artist and writer who lives in Wickham, Hampshire. He was born in Ashford, Kent, and grew up in Portsmouth, England. He attended Crookhorn Comprehensive School between 1971 an ...
regarded it as one of the most accurate depictions of the living dodo; the surrounding birds are clearly identifiable and depicted with appropriate colouring. It is believed to be from the 17th century and has been attributed to the
Mughal painter Ustad Mansur
Ustad Mansur (flourished 1590-1624) was a seventeenth-century Mughal painter and court artist. He grew up during the reign of Jahangir (r. 1605 - 1627) during which period he excelled at depicting plants and animals. He was the earliest artist t ...
. The bird depicted probably lived in the
menagerie of the
Mughal Emperor
The Mughal emperors ( fa, , Pādishāhān) were the supreme heads of state of the Mughal Empire on the Indian subcontinent, mainly corresponding to the modern countries of India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh. The Mughal rulers styled t ...
Jahangir, located in
Surat, where the English traveller
Peter Mundy also claimed to have seen two dodos sometime between 1628 and 1633. In 2014, another Indian illustration of a dodo was reported, but it was found to be derivative of an 1836 German illustration.
All post-1638 depictions appear to be based on earlier images, around the time reports mentioning dodos became rarer. Differences in the depictions led ornithologists such as
Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans
Anthonie (Antoon) Cornelis Oudemans Jzn (November 12, 1858 – January 14, 1943) was a Dutch zoologist. Although he was a specialist in acarology, the study of the ticks and mites, he was often best known for his books on sea monsters and the do ...
and
Masauji Hachisuka
, 18th Marquess Hachisuka, was a Japanese ornithologist and aviculturist.Delacour, J. (1953) The Dodo and Kindred Birds by Masauji Hachisuka (Review). The Condor 55 (4): 223.Peterson, A. P. (2013Author Index: Hachisuka, Masauji (Masa Uji), marqu ...
to speculate about sexual dimorphism,
ontogenic traits, seasonal variation, and even the existence of different species, but these theories are not accepted today. Because details such as markings of the beak, the form of the tail feathers, and colouration vary from account to account, it is impossible to determine the exact morphology of these features, whether they signal age or sex, or if they even reflect reality. Hume argued that the nostrils of the living dodo would have been slits, as seen in the ''Gelderland'',
Cornelis Saftleven
Cornelis Saftleven (c. 1607 in Gorinchem – 1 June 1681 in Rotterdam) was a Dutch painter who worked in a great variety of genres. Known in particular for his rural genre scenes, his range of subjects was very wide and included portraits, farmho ...
, Savery's
Crocker Art Gallery, and Ustad Mansur images. According to this claim, the gaping nostrils often seen in paintings indicate that
taxidermy
Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body via mounting (over an armature) or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word ''taxidermy'' describes the proc ...
specimens were used as models. Most depictions show that the wings were held in an extended position, unlike flighted pigeons, but similar to
ratites
A ratite () is any of a diverse group of flightless, large, long-necked, and long-legged birds of the infraclass Palaeognathae. Kiwi, the exception, are much smaller and shorter-legged and are the only nocturnal extant ratites.
The systematics ...
such as the ostrich and
kiwi
Kiwi most commonly refers to:
* Kiwi (bird), a flightless bird native to New Zealand
* Kiwi (nickname), a nickname for New Zealanders
* Kiwifruit, an edible berry
* Kiwi dollar or New Zealand dollar, a unit of currency
Kiwi or KIWI may also ref ...
.
Behaviour and ecology
Little is known of the behaviour of the dodo, as most contemporary descriptions are very brief. Based on weight estimates, it has been suggested the male could reach the age of 21, and the female 17. Studies of the
cantilever
A cantilever is a rigid structural element that extends horizontally and is supported at only one end. Typically it extends from a flat vertical surface such as a wall, to which it must be firmly attached. Like other structural elements, a cant ...
strength of its leg bones indicate that it could run quite fast. The legs were robust and strong to support the bulk of the bird, and also made it agile and manoeuvrable in the dense, pre-human landscape. Though the wings were small, well-developed muscle scars on the bones show that they were not completely
vestigial
Vestigiality is the retention, during the process of evolution, of genetically determined structures or attributes that have lost some or all of the ancestral function in a given species. Assessment of the vestigiality must generally rely on co ...
, and may have been used for
display behaviour
Display behaviour is a set of ritualized behaviours that enable an animal to communicate to other animals (typically of the same species) about specific stimuli. These ritualized behaviours can be visual however many animals depend on a mixture ...
and balance; extant pigeons also use their wings for such purposes. Unlike the Rodrigues solitaire, there is no evidence that the dodo used its wings in intraspecific combat. Though some dodo bones have been found with healed fractures, it had weak pectoral muscles and more reduced wings in comparison. The dodo may instead have used its large, hooked beak in territorial disputes. Since Mauritius receives more rainfall and has less seasonal variation than Rodrigues, which would have affected the availability of resources on the island, the dodo would have less reason to evolve aggressive territorial behaviour. The Rodrigues solitaire was therefore probably the more aggressive of the two. In 2016, the first 3D
endocast
An endocast is the internal cast of a hollow object, often referring to the cranial vault in the study of brain development in humans and other organisms. Endocasts can be artificially made for examining the properties of a hollow, inaccessible sp ...
was made from the brain of the dodo; the
brain-to-body-size ratio was similar to that of modern pigeons, indicating that dodos were probably equal in intelligence.
![Gelderland1601-1603 Mauritius de Nassauw 1601](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Gelderland1601-1603_Mauritius_de_Nassauw_1601.jpg)
The preferred habitat of the dodo is unknown, but old descriptions suggest that it inhabited the woods on the drier coastal areas of south and west Mauritius. This view is supported by the fact that the
Mare aux Songes
The Mare aux Songes () swamp is a lagerstätte located close to the sea in south eastern Mauritius. Many subfossils of recently extinct animals have accumulated in the swamp, which was once a lake, and some of the first subfossil remains of dodos w ...
swamp, where most dodo remains have been excavated, is close to the sea in south-eastern Mauritius. Such a limited distribution across the island could well have contributed to its extinction. A 1601 map from the ''Gelderland'' journal shows a small island off the coast of Mauritius where dodos were caught. Julian Hume has suggested this island was
l'île aux Benitiers in
Tamarin Bay, on the west coast of Mauritius. Subfossil bones have also been found inside caves in highland areas, indicating that it once occurred on mountains. Work at the Mare aux Songes swamp has shown that its habitat was dominated by
tambalacoque and ''
Pandanus'' trees and endemic palms. The near-coastal placement and wetness of the Mare aux Songes led to a high diversity of plant species, whereas the surrounding areas were drier.
Many endemic species of Mauritius became extinct after the arrival of humans. So the
ecosystem
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
of the island is badly damaged and hard to reconstruct. Before humans arrived, Mauritius was entirely covered in forests, but very little remains of them today, because of
deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated ...
. The surviving endemic
fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is ''funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as ''Biota (ecology ...
is still seriously threatened. The dodo lived alongside other recently extinct Mauritian birds such as the flightless red rail, the
broad-billed parrot
The broad-billed parrot or raven parrot (''Lophopsittacus mauritianus'') is a large extinct parrot in the family Psittaculidae. It was endemic to the Mascarene island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. It is unclear what othe ...
, the
Mascarene grey parakeet, the
Mauritius blue pigeon, the
Mauritius scops owl, the
Mascarene coot, the
Mauritian shelduck, the
Mauritian duck, and the
Mauritius night heron. Extinct Mauritian reptiles include the
saddle-backed Mauritius giant tortoise, the
domed Mauritius giant tortoise
The domed Mauritius giant tortoise (''Cylindraspis triserrata'') is an extinct species of giant tortoise. It was endemic to Mauritius.
Description
One of two different giant tortoise species which were endemic to Mauritius, this domed species s ...
, the
Mauritian giant skink, and the
Round Island burrowing boa. The
small Mauritian flying fox and the snail ''
Tropidophora carinata
''Tropidophora carinata'' is a species of land snail with a gill and an operculum, a terrestrial gastropod mollusk in the family Pomatiidae.
This species was found in Mauritius
Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label= Ma ...
'' lived on Mauritius and Réunion, but vanished from both islands. Some plants, such as ''
Casearia tinifolia'' and the
palm orchid, have also become extinct.
Diet
A 1631 Dutch letter (long thought lost, but rediscovered in 2017) is the only account of the dodo's diet, and also mentions that it used its beak for defence. The document uses
word-play to refer to the animals described, with dodos presumably being an
allegory for wealthy mayors:
![Roelandt Savery - 'Dodo Birds', Chalk, black and amber on cream paper](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Roelandt_Savery_-_%27Dodo_Birds%27%2C_Chalk%2C_black_and_amber_on_cream_paper.jpg)
In addition to fallen fruits, the dodo probably subsisted on nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. It has also been suggested that the dodo might have eaten
crabs
Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen) ( el, βραχύς , translit=brachys = short, / = tail), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the ...
and
shellfish, like their relatives the crowned pigeons. Its feeding habits must have been versatile, since captive specimens were probably given a wide range of food on the long sea journeys. Oudemans suggested that as Mauritius has marked dry and wet seasons, the dodo probably fattened itself on ripe fruits at the end of the wet season to survive the dry season, when food was scarce; contemporary reports describe the bird's "greedy" appetite. The Mauritian ornithologist
France Staub suggested in 1996 that they mainly fed on
palm
Palm most commonly refers to:
* Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand
* Palm plants, of family Arecaceae
**List of Arecaceae genera
* Several other plants known as "palm"
Palm or Palms may also refer to:
Music
* Palm (ba ...
fruits, and he attempted to correlate the fat-cycle of the dodo with the fruiting regime of the palms.
Skeletal elements of the upper jaw appear to have been
rhynchokinetic (movable in relation to each other), which must have affected its feeding behaviour. In extant birds, such as
frugivorous
A frugivore is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance an ...
(fruit-eating) pigeons, kinetic
premaxillae
The premaxilla (or praemaxilla) is one of a pair of small cranial bones at the very tip of the upper jaw of many animals, usually, but not always, bearing teeth. In humans, they are fused with the maxilla. The "premaxilla" of therian mammal has b ...
help with consuming large food items. The beak also appears to have been able to withstand high force loads, which indicates a diet of hard food. Examination of the brain endocast found that though the brain was similar to that of other pigeons in most respects, the dodo had a comparatively large
olfactory bulb
The olfactory bulb (Latin: ''bulbus olfactorius'') is a neural structure of the vertebrate forebrain involved in olfaction, the sense of smell. It sends olfactory information to be further processed in the amygdala, the orbitofrontal cortex ( ...
. This gave the dodo a good sense of smell, which may have aided in locating fruit and small prey.
![Clusius dodo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Clusius_dodo.jpg)
Several contemporary sources state that the dodo used
Gastrolith
A gastrolith, also called a stomach stone or gizzard stone, is a rock held inside a gastrointestinal tract. Gastroliths in some species are retained in the muscular gizzard and used to grind food in animals lacking suitable grinding teeth. In oth ...
s (gizzard stones) to aid digestion. The English writer Sir
Hamon L'Estrange
Hamon L'Estrange (1605–1660) was an English writer on history, theology and liturgy, of Calvinist views, loyal both to Charles I and the Church of England. Along with Edward Stephens (d. 1706), he contributed to the seventeenth-century reviva ...
witnessed a live bird in London and described it as follows:
It is not known how the young were fed, but related pigeons provide
crop milk
Crop milk is a secretion from the lining of the crop of parent birds that is regurgitated to young birds. It is found among all pigeons and doves where it is referred to as pigeon milk. An analog to crop milk is also secreted from the esopha ...
. Contemporary depictions show a large crop, which was probably used to add space for food storage and to produce crop milk. It has been suggested that the maximum size attained by the dodo and the solitaire was limited by the amount of crop milk they could produce for their young during early growth.
In 1973, the
tambalacoque, also known as the dodo tree, was thought to be dying out on Mauritius, to which it is
endemic
Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...
. There were supposedly only 13 specimens left, all estimated to be about 300 years old.
Stanley Temple hypothesised that it depended on the dodo for its propagation, and that its seeds would germinate only after passing through the bird's digestive tract. He claimed that the tambalacoque was now nearly
coextinct because of the disappearance of the dodo. Temple overlooked reports from the 1940s that found that tambalacoque seeds germinated, albeit very rarely, without being
abraded during digestion. Others have contested his hypothesis and suggested that the decline of the tree was exaggerated or seeds were also distributed by other extinct animals such as ''
Cylindraspis''
tortoise
Tortoises () are reptiles of the family Testudinidae of the order Testudines (Latin: ''tortoise''). Like other turtles, tortoises have a shell to protect from predation and other threats. The shell in tortoises is generally hard, and like oth ...
s,
fruit bat
Megabats constitute the family Pteropodidae of the order Chiroptera (bats). They are also called fruit bats, Old World fruit bats, or—especially the genera '' Acerodon'' and ''Pteropus''—flying foxes. They are the only member of the ...
s, or the broad-billed parrot. According to Wendy Strahm and Anthony Cheke, two experts in the
ecology
Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...
of the Mascarene Islands, the tree, while rare, has germinated since the demise of the dodo and numbers several hundred, not 13 as claimed by Temple, hence, discrediting Temple's view as to the dodo and the tree's sole survival relationship.
The Brazilian ornithologist Carlos Yamashita suggested in 1997 that the broad-billed parrot may have depended on dodos and ''Cylindraspis'' tortoises to eat palm fruits and excrete their seeds, which became food for the parrots. ''
Anodorhynchus
''Anodorhynchus'' is a genus of large blue macaws from open and semi-open habitats in central and eastern South America. It includes two extant species, the hyacinth macaw and Lear's macaw also known as the indigo macaw, and one probably extinct ...
'' macaws depended on now-extinct
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...
n
megafauna in the same way, but now rely on domesticated cattle for this service.
Reproduction and development
![Dodo egg replica](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Dodo_egg_replica.jpg)
As it was flightless and terrestrial and there were no
mammalian
Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur o ...
predators or other kinds of natural enemy on Mauritius, the dodo probably nested on the ground. The account by François Cauche from 1651 is the only description of the egg and the
call
Call or Calls may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Games
* Call, a type of betting in poker
* Call, in the game of contract bridge, a bid, pass, double, or redouble in the bidding stage
Music and dance
* Call (band), from Lahore, Paki ...
:
Cauche's account is problematic, since it also mentions that the bird he was describing had three toes and no tongue, unlike dodos. This led some to believe that Cauche was describing a new species of dodo ("''Didus nazarenus''"). The description was most probably mingled with that of a
cassowary
Cassowaries ( tpi, muruk, id, kasuari) are flightless birds of the genus ''Casuarius'' in the order Casuariiformes. They are classified as ratites (flightless birds without a keel on their sternum bones) and are native to the tropical fore ...
, and Cauche's writings have other inconsistencies. A mention of a "young ostrich" taken on board a ship in 1617 is the only other reference to a possible juvenile dodo. An egg claimed to be that of a dodo is stored in the
East London Museum
East London Museum is a museum in East London, Eastern Cape, South Africa, notable for holding the type specimen of the coelacanth, a fish previously believed to be long extinct. It was the workplace of Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, the fish's d ...
in South Africa. It was donated by the South African museum official
Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer
Marjorie Eileen Doris Courtenay-Latimer (24 February 190717 May 2004) was a South African museum official, who in 1938, brought to the attention of the world the existence of the coelacanth, a fish thought to have been extinct for 65 million y ...
, whose great aunt had received it from a captain who claimed to have found it in a swamp on Mauritius. In 2010, the curator of the museum proposed using genetic studies to determine its authenticity. It may instead be an aberrant
ostrich egg
The egg of the ostrich (genus ''Struthio'') is the largest of any living bird. The shell has a long history of use by humans as a container and for decorative artwork. The eggs are not commonly eaten.
Biology
The female common ostrich lays he ...
.
Because of the possible single-egg clutch and the bird's large size, it has been proposed that the dodo was
K-selected
In ecology, ''r''/''K'' selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between quantity and quality of offspring. The focus on either an increased quantity of offspring at the expense of indivi ...
, meaning that it produced few
altricial
In biology, altricial species are those in which the young are underdeveloped at the time of birth, but with the aid of their parents mature after birth. Precocial species are those in which the young are relatively mature and mobile from the mome ...
offspring, which required parental care until they matured. Some evidence, including the large size and the fact that tropical and frugivorous birds have slower growth rates, indicates that the bird may have had a protracted development period. The fact that no juvenile dodos have been found in the Mare aux Songes swamp may indicate that they produced little offspring, that they matured rapidly, that the breeding grounds were far away from the swamp, or that the risk of miring was seasonal.
A 2017 study examined the
histology
Histology,
also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology which studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at larger structures vi ...
of
thin-sectioned dodo bones, modern Mauritian birds, local ecology, and contemporary accounts, to recover information about the life history of the dodo. The study suggested that dodos bred around August, after having potentially fattened themselves, corresponding with the fat and thin cycles of many vertebrates of Mauritius. The chicks grew rapidly, reaching robust, almost adult, sizes, and sexual maturity before Austral summer or the cyclone season. Adult dodos which had just bred
moulted after Austral summer, around March. The feathers of the wings and tail were replaced first, and the moulting would have completed at the end of July, in time for the next breeding season. Different stages of moulting may also account for inconsistencies in contemporary descriptions of dodo plumage.
Relationship with humans
![Jacht op dodo's door Willem van West-Zanen uit 1602](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Jacht_op_dodo%27s_door_Willem_van_West-Zanen_uit_1602.jpg)
Mauritius had previously been visited by
Arab
The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
vessels in the
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
and Portuguese ships between 1507 and 1513, but was settled by neither. No records of dodos by these are known, although the Portuguese name for Mauritius, "Cerne (swan) Island", may have been a reference to dodos. The Dutch Empire acquired Mauritius in 1598, renaming it after
Maurice of Nassau
Maurice of Orange ( nl, Maurits van Oranje; 14 November 1567 – 23 April 1625) was ''stadtholder'' of all the provinces of the Dutch Republic except for Friesland from 1585 at the earliest until his death in 1625. Before he became Prince o ...
, and it was used for the provisioning of trade vessels of the
Dutch East India Company
The United East India Company ( nl, Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, the VOC) was a chartered company established on the 20th March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands amalgamating existing companies into the first joint-stock ...
henceforward. The earliest known accounts of the dodo were provided by Dutch travellers during the
Second Dutch Expedition to Indonesia
The Second Dutch Expedition to East Indies was an expedition that took place from 1598 to 1600, one of the Dutch forays into the East Indies spice trade that led to the establishment of the Dutch East India Company. It was led by Jacob Cornelius ...
, led by
admiral Jacob van Neck
Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck (often anglicized to Jacob Cornelius van Neck) (1564–1638) was a Dutch naval officer and explorer who led the second Dutch expedition to Indonesia from 1598 to 1599.
Early life
Van Neck was from an Amsterdam family ...
in 1598. They appear in reports published in 1601, which also contain the first published illustration of the bird. Since the first sailors to visit Mauritius had been at sea for a long time, their interest in these large birds was mainly culinary. The 1602 journal by Willem Van West-Zanen of the ship ''Bruin-Vis'' mentions that 24–25 dodos were hunted for food, which were so large that two could scarcely be consumed at mealtime, their remains being preserved by
salting. An illustration made for the 1648 published version of this journal, showing the killing of dodos, a
dugong
The dugong (; ''Dugong dugon'') is a marine mammal. It is one of four living species of the order Sirenia, which also includes three species of manatees. It is the only living representative of the once-diverse family Dugongidae; its closest m ...
, and possibly Mascarene grey parakeets, was captioned with a Dutch poem, here in Hugh Strickland's 1848 translation:
Some early travellers found dodo meat unsavoury, and preferred to eat parrots and pigeons; others described it as tough, but good. Some hunted dodos only for their gizzards, as this was considered the most delicious part of the bird. Dodos were easy to catch, but hunters had to be careful not to be bitten by their powerful beaks.
The appearance of the dodo and the red rail led Peter Mundy to speculate, 230 years before
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended ...
's theory of
evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...
:
Dodos transported abroad
The dodo was found interesting enough that living specimens were sent to Europe and the East. The number of transported dodos that reached their destinations alive is uncertain, and it is unknown how they relate to contemporary depictions and the few non-fossil remains in European museums. Based on a combination of contemporary accounts, paintings, and specimens, Julian Hume has inferred that at least eleven transported dodos reached their destinations alive.
Hamon L'Estrange's description of a dodo that he saw in London in 1638 is the only account that specifically mentions a live specimen in Europe. In 1626
Adriaen van de Venne
Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne (1589 – 12 November 1662), was a versatile Dutch Golden Age painter of allegories, genre subjects, and portraits, as well as a miniaturist, book illustrator, designer of political satires, and versifier.
Bio ...
drew a dodo that he claimed to have seen in Amsterdam, but he did not mention if it were alive, and his depiction is reminiscent of Savery's ''Edwards's Dodo''. Two live specimens were seen by Peter Mundy in Surat, India, between 1628 and 1634, one of which may have been the individual painted by Ustad Mansur around 1625. In 1628, Emmanuel Altham visited Mauritius and sent a letter to his brother in England:
![The Temptation of Saint Anthony with dodo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/The_Temptation_of_Saint_Anthony_with_dodo.jpg)
Whether the dodo survived the journey is unknown, and the letter was destroyed by fire in the 19th century.
The earliest known picture of a dodo specimen in Europe is from a collection of paintings depicting animals in the royal menagerie of
Emperor Rudolph II
Rudolf II (18 July 1552 – 20 January 1612) was Holy Roman Emperor (1576–1612), King of Hungary and Croatia (as Rudolf I, 1572–1608), King of Bohemia (1575–1608/1611) and Archduke of Austria (1576–1608). He was a member of the Hous ...
in Prague. This collection includes paintings of other Mauritian animals as well, including a red rail. The dodo, which may be a juvenile, seems to have been dried or embalmed, and had probably lived in the emperor's zoo for a while together with the other animals. That whole stuffed dodos were present in Europe indicates they had been brought alive and died there; it is unlikely that taxidermists were on board the visiting ships, and spirits were not yet used to preserve biological specimens. Most
tropical
The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in
the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...
specimens were preserved as dried heads and feet.
One dodo was reportedly sent as far as
Nagasaki
is the capital and the largest Cities of Japan, city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
It became the sole Nanban trade, port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hi ...
, Japan, in 1647, but it was long unknown whether it arrived. Contemporary documents first published in 2014 proved the story, and showed that it had arrived alive. It was meant as a gift, and, despite its rarity, was considered of equal value to a white deer and a
bezoar
A bezoar is a mass often found trapped in the gastrointestinal system, though it can occur in other locations. A pseudobezoar is an indigestible object introduced intentionally into the digestive system.
There are several varieties of bezoar, s ...
stone. It is the last recorded live dodo in captivity.
Extinction
![Pioneers in South Africa (1914) (14576727409)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e7/Pioneers_in_South_Africa_%281914%29_%2814576727409%29.jpg)
Like many animals that evolved in isolation from significant predators, the dodo was entirely
fearless
Fearless or The Fearless may refer to:
Psychology
* Lack of fear
* Courage or bravery
Film, television and audio Film
* ''Fearless'' (1978 film), an Italian film directed by Stelvio Massi
* ''Fearless'' (1993 film), an American drama directed ...
of humans. This fearlessness and its inability to fly made the dodo easy prey for sailors. Although some scattered reports describe mass killings of dodos for ships' provisions, archaeological investigations have found scant evidence of human predation. Bones of at least two dodos were found in caves at Baie du Cap that sheltered
fugitive slaves
In the United States, fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th century to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freed ...
and convicts in the 17th century, which would not have been easily accessible to dodos because of the high, broken terrain. The human population on Mauritius (an area of ) never exceeded 50 people in the 17th century, but they introduced other animals, including dogs, pigs, cats, rats, and
crab-eating macaques, which plundered dodo nests and competed for the limited food resources. At the same time, humans destroyed the forest
habitat
In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...
of the dodos. The impact of the introduced animals on the dodo population, especially the pigs and macaques, is today considered more severe than that of hunting. Rats were perhaps not much of a threat to the nests, since dodos would have been used to dealing with local
land crabs
A number of lineages of crabs have evolved to live predominantly on land. Examples of terrestrial crabs are found in the families Gecarcinidae and Gecarcinucidae, as well as in selected genera from other families, such as ''Sesarma'', althou ...
.
It has been suggested that the dodo may already have been rare or localised before the arrival of humans on Mauritius, since it would have been unlikely to become extinct so rapidly if it had occupied all the remote areas of the island. A 2005 expedition found subfossil remains of dodos and other animals killed by a
flash flood. Such mass mortalities would have further jeopardised a species already in danger of becoming extinct. Yet the fact that the dodo survived hundreds of years of volcanic activity and climatic changes shows the bird was resilient within its ecosystem.
Some controversy surrounds the date of its extinction. The last widely accepted record of a dodo sighting is the 1662 report by shipwrecked mariner Volkert Evertsz of the Dutch ship ''
Arnhem
Arnhem ( or ; german: Arnheim; South Guelderish: ''Èrnem'') is a city and municipality situated in the eastern part of the Netherlands about 55 km south east of Utrecht. It is the capital of the province of Gelderland, located on both ban ...
'', who described birds caught on a small islet off Mauritius, now suggested to be
Amber Island:
The dodos on this islet may not necessarily have been the last members of the species. The last claimed sighting of a dodo was reported in the hunting records of
Isaac Johannes Lamotius in 1688. A 2003
statistical analysis of these records by the biologists David L. Roberts and Andrew R. Solow gave a new estimated extinction date of 1693, with a 95%
confidence interval of 1688–1715. These authors also pointed out that because the last sighting before 1662 was in 1638, the dodo was probably already quite rare by the 1660s, and thus a disputed report from 1674 by an escaped slave could not be dismissed out of hand.
![Aphanapteryx bonasia](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Aphanapteryx_bonasia.JPG)
The British ornithologist
Alfred Newton
Alfred Newton FRS HFRSE (11 June 18297 June 1907) was an English zoologist and ornithologist. Newton was Professor of Comparative Anatomy at Cambridge University from 1866 to 1907. Among his numerous publications were a four-volume ''Dictionar ...
suggested in 1868 that the name of the dodo was transferred to the red rail after the former had gone extinct.
Cheke also pointed out that some descriptions after 1662 use the names "Dodo" and "Dodaers" when referring to the red rail, indicating that they had been transferred to it. He therefore pointed to the 1662 description as the last credible observation. A 1668 account by English traveller John Marshall, who used the names "Dodo" and "Red Hen" interchangeably for the red rail, mentioned that the meat was "hard", which echoes the description of the meat in the 1681 account. Even the 1662 account has been questioned by the writer
Errol Fuller
Errol Fuller (born 19 June 1947) is an English writer and artist who lives in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. He was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, grew up in South London, and was educated at Addey and Stanhope School. He is the author of a series of bo ...
, as the reaction to distress cries matches what was described for the red rail. Until this explanation was proposed, a description of "dodos" from 1681 was thought to be the last account, and that date still has proponents.
Cheke stated in 2014 that then recently accessible Dutch manuscripts indicate that no dodos were seen by settlers in 1664–1674. In 2020, Cheke and the British researcher Jolyon C. Parish suggested that all mentions of dodos after the mid-17th century instead referred to red rails, and that the dodo had disappeared due to predation by
feral pigs
The feral pig is a domestic pig which has gone feral, meaning it lives in the wild. They are found mostly in the Americas and Australia. Razorback and wild hog are Americanisms applied to feral pigs or boar-pig hybrids.
Definition
A feral p ...
during a hiatus in settlement of Mauritius (1658–1664). The dodo's extinction therefore was not realised at the time, since new settlers had not seen real dodos, but as they expected to see flightless birds, they referred to the red rail by that name instead. Since red rails probably had larger clutches than dodos and their eggs could be incubated faster, and their nests were perhaps concealed, they probably bred more efficiently, and were less vulnerable to pigs.
It is unlikely the issue will ever be resolved, unless late reports mentioning the name alongside a physical description are rediscovered. The
IUCN Red List
The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...
accepts Cheke's rationale for choosing the 1662 date, taking all subsequent reports to refer to red rails. In any case, the dodo was probably extinct by 1700, about a century after its discovery in 1598. The Dutch left Mauritius in 1710, but by then the dodo and most of the large terrestrial vertebrates there had become extinct.
Even though the rareness of the dodo was reported already in the 17th century, its extinction was not recognised until the 19th century. This was partly because, for religious reasons, extinction was not believed possible until later proved so by
Georges Cuvier, and partly because many scientists doubted that the dodo had ever existed. It seemed altogether too strange a creature, and many believed it a myth. The bird was first used as an example of human-induced extinction in ''Penny Magazine'' in 1833, and has since been referred to as an "icon" of extinction.
Physical remains
17th-century specimens
![Dodo upper beak in Prague](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Dodo_upper_beak_in_Prague.jpg)
The only extant remains of dodos taken to Europe in the 17th century are a dried head and foot in the
Oxford University Museum of Natural History
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, sometimes known simply as the Oxford University Museum or OUMNH, is a museum displaying many of the University of Oxford's natural history specimens, located on Parks Road in Oxford, England. It a ...
, a foot once housed in the British Museum but now lost, a skull in the
University of Copenhagen Zoological Museum
The Copenhagen Zoological Museum ( Danish: ''Zoologisk Museum'') is a part of the Natural History Museum of Denmark, which is affiliated with the University of Copenhagen.
History
The Zoological Museum It is among the world's oldest natural his ...
, and an upper jaw in the
National Museum, Prague. The last two were rediscovered and identified as dodo remains in the mid-19th century. Several stuffed dodos were also mentioned in old museum inventories, but none are known to have survived. Apart from these remains, a dried foot, which belonged to the Dutch professor Pieter Pauw, was mentioned by Carolus Clusius in 1605. Its provenance is unknown, and it is now lost, but it may have been collected during the Van Neck voyage. Supposed stuffed dodos seen in museums around the world today have in fact been made from feathers of other birds, many of the older ones by the British taxidermist
Rowland Ward
James Rowland Ward (1848–1912) was a British taxidermist and founder of the firm Rowland Ward Limited of Piccadilly, London. The company specialised in and was renowned for its taxidermy work on birds and big-game trophies, but it did other t ...
's company.
![Dodo casts c1800](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Dodo_casts_c1800.jpg)
The only known soft tissue remains, the Oxford head (specimen OUM 11605) and foot, belonged to the last known stuffed dodo, which was first mentioned as part of the
Tradescant collection in 1656 and was moved to the
Ashmolean Museum in 1659. It has been suggested that this might be the remains of the bird that Hamon L'Estrange saw in London, the bird sent by Emanuel Altham, or a donation by Thomas Herbert. Since the remains do not show signs of having been mounted, the specimen might instead have been preserved as a
study skin.
In 2018, it was reported that scans of the Oxford dodo's head showed that its skin and bone contained
lead shot
Shot is a collective term for small spheres or pellets, often made of lead. These were the original projectiles for shotguns and are still fired primarily from shotguns and less commonly from riot guns and grenade launchers, although shot shell ...
, pellets which were used to hunt birds in the 17th century. This indicates that the Oxford dodo was shot either before being transported to Britain, or some time after arriving. The circumstances of its killing are unknown, and the pellets are to be examined to identify where the lead was mined from.
Many sources state that the Ashmolean Museum burned the stuffed dodo around 1755 because of severe decay, saving only the head and leg. Statute 8 of the museum states "That as any particular grows old and perishing the keeper may remove it into one of the closets or other repository; and some other to be substituted." The deliberate destruction of the specimen is now believed to be a myth; it was removed from exhibition to preserve what remained of it. This remaining soft tissue has since degraded further; the head was dissected by Strickland and Melville, separating the skin from the skull in two-halves. The foot is in a skeletal state, with only scraps of skin and
tendon
A tendon or sinew is a tough, high-tensile-strength band of dense fibrous connective tissue that connects muscle to bone. It is able to transmit the mechanical forces of muscle contraction to the skeletal system without sacrificing its ability ...
s. Very few feathers remain on the head. It is probably a female, as the foot is 11% smaller and more gracile than the London foot, yet appears to be fully grown. The specimen was exhibited at the Oxford museum from at least the 1860s and until 1998, where-after it was mainly kept in storage to prevent damage.
Casts of the head can today be found in many museums worldwide.
The dried London foot, first mentioned in 1665, and transferred to the British Museum in the 18th century, was displayed next to Savery's ''Edwards's Dodo'' painting until the 1840s, and it too was dissected by Strickland and Melville. It was not posed in a standing posture, which suggests that it was severed from a fresh specimen, not a mounted one. By 1896 it was mentioned as being without its
integument
In biology, an integument is the tissue surrounding an organism's body or an organ within, such as skin, a husk, shell, germ or rind.
Etymology
The term is derived from ''integumentum'', which is Latin for "a covering". In a transferred, or ...
s, and only the bones are believed to remain today, though its present whereabouts are unknown.
The Copenhagen skull (specimen ZMUC 90-806) is known to have been part of the collection of Bernardus Paludanus in
Enkhuizen
Enkhuizen () is a municipality and a city in the Netherlands, in the province of North Holland and the region of West-Frisia.
History
Enkhuizen, like Hoorn and Amsterdam, was one of the harbor-towns of the VOC, from where overseas trade w ...
until 1651, when it was moved to the museum in
Gottorf Castle
Gottorf Castle (german: Schloss Gottorf, da, Gottorp Slot, Low German: ''Gottorp'') is a castle and estate in the city of Schleswig, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. It is one of the most important secular buildings in Schleswig-Holstein, and ha ...
,
Schleswig
The Duchy of Schleswig ( da, Hertugdømmet Slesvig; german: Herzogtum Schleswig; nds, Hartogdom Sleswig; frr, Härtochduum Slaswik) was a duchy in Southern Jutland () covering the area between about 60 km (35 miles) north and 70 km ...
. After the castle was occupied by Danish forces in 1702, the museum collection was assimilated into the Royal Danish collection. The skull was rediscovered by J. T. Reinhardt in 1840. Based on its history, it may be the oldest known surviving remains of a dodo brought to Europe in the 17th century. It is shorter than the Oxford skull, and may have belonged to a female. It was
mummified
A mummy is a dead human or an animal whose soft tissues and organs have been preserved by either intentional or accidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air, so that the recovered body does not decay furt ...
, but the skin has perished.
The front part of a skull (specimen NMP P6V-004389) in the National Museum of Prague was found in 1850 among the remains of the Böhmisches Museum. Other elements supposedly belonging to this specimen have been listed in the literature, but it appears only the partial skull was ever present (a partial right limb in the museum appears to be from a Rodrigues solitaire). It may be what remains of one of the stuffed dodos known to have been at the menagerie of Emperor Rudolph II, possibly the specimen painted by Hoefnagel or Savery there.
Subfossil specimens
Until 1860, the only known dodo remains were the four incomplete 17th-century specimens.
Philip Burnard Ayres found the first subfossil bones in 1860, which were sent to Richard Owen at the British Museum, who did not publish the findings. In 1863, Owen requested the Mauritian
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution.
In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is c ...
Vincent Ryan to spread word that he should be informed if any dodo bones were found. In 1865, George Clark, the government
schoolmaster
The word schoolmaster, or simply master, refers to a male school teacher. This usage survives in British independent schools, both secondary and preparatory, and a few Indian boarding schools (such as The Doon School) that were modelled afte ...
at
Mahébourg
Mahébourg is a small town on the south-eastern coast of the island of Mauritius, having a population of 15,457 as of 2015.Digest of Demographic Statistics 2015; Available at http://statsmauritius.govmu.org/English/Pages/POPULATION--And-VITAL-STAT ...
, finally found an abundance of subfossil dodo bones in the swamp of Mare aux Songes in Southern Mauritius, after a 30-year search inspired by Strickland and Melville's monograph. In 1866, Clark explained his procedure to ''
The Ibis
''Ibis'' (formerly ''The Ibis''), subtitled ''the International Journal of Avian Science'', is the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the British Ornithologists' Union. It was established in 1859. Topics covered include ecology, conservation, be ...
'', an ornithology journal: he had sent his
coolies
A coolie (also spelled koelie, kuli, khuli, khulie, cooli, cooly, or quli) is a term for a low-wage labourer, typically of South Asian or East Asian descent.
The word ''coolie'' was first popularized in the 16th century by European traders acros ...
to wade through the centre of the swamp, feeling for bones with their feet. At first they found few bones, until they cut away herbage that covered the deepest part of the swamp, where they found many fossils.
Harry Pasley Higginson, a railway engineer from
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...
, reports discovering the Mare aux Songes bones at the same time as Clark and there is some dispute over who found them first. Higginson sent boxes of these bones to
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
,
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...
and
York
York is a cathedral city with Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. It is the historic county town of Yorkshire. The city has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a ...
museums. The swamp yielded the remains of over 300 dodos, but very few skull and wing bones, possibly because the upper bodies were washed away or scavenged while the lower body was trapped. The situation is similar to many finds of
moa
Moa are extinct giant flightless birds native to New Zealand.
The term has also come to be used for chicken in many Polynesian cultures and is found in the names of many chicken recipes, such as
Kale moa and Moa Samoa.
Moa or MOA may also refe ...
remains in
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
marshes. Most dodo remains from the Mare aux Songes have a medium to dark brown colouration.
Clark's reports about the finds rekindled interest in the bird. Sir Richard Owen and Alfred Newton both wanted to be first to describe the
post-cranial anatomy of the dodo, and Owen bought a shipment of dodo bones originally meant for Newton, which led to rivalry between the two. Owen described the bones in ''Memoir on the Dodo'' in October 1866, but erroneously based his reconstruction on the ''Edwards's Dodo'' painting by Savery, making it too squat and obese. In 1869 he received more bones and corrected its stance, making it more upright. Newton moved his focus to the Réunion solitaire instead. The remaining bones not sold to Owen or Newton were auctioned off or donated to museums.
In 1889, Théodor Sauzier was commissioned to explore the "historical souvenirs" of Mauritius and find more dodo remains in the Mare aux Songes. He was successful, and also found remains of other extinct species.
In 2005, after a hundred years of neglect, a part of the Mare aux Songes swamp was excavated by an international team of researchers (International Dodo Research Project). To prevent
malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
, the British had covered the swamp with
hard core during their rule over Mauritius, which had to be removed. Many remains were found, including bones of at least 17 dodos in various stages of maturity (though no juveniles), and several bones obviously from the skeleton of one individual bird, which have been preserved in their natural position. These findings were made public in December 2005 in the
Naturalis museum in
Leiden
Leiden (; in English and archaic Dutch also Leyden) is a city and municipality in the province of South Holland, Netherlands. The municipality of Leiden has a population of 119,713, but the city forms one densely connected agglomeration wi ...
. 63% of the fossils found in the swamp belonged to turtles of the extinct genus ''Cylindraspis'', and 7.1% belonged to dodos, which had been deposited within several centuries, 4,000 years ago. Subsequent excavations suggested that dodos and other animals became mired in the Mare aux Songes while trying to reach water during a long period of severe drought about 4,200 years ago. Furthermore,
cyanobacteria thrived in the conditions created by the excrements of animals gathered around the swamp, which died of intoxication, dehydration, trampling, and miring. Though many small skeletal elements were found during the recent excavations of the swamp, few were found during the 19th century, probably owing to the employment of less refined methods when collecting.
Louis Etienne Thirioux, an amateur naturalist at Port Louis, also found many dodo remains around 1900 from several locations. They included the first articulated specimen, which is the first subfossil dodo skeleton found outside the Mare aux Songes, and the only remains of a juvenile specimen, a now lost
tarsometatarsus. The former specimen was found in 1904 in a cave near
Le Pouce
Le Pouce (; English: "The Thumb") is the third highest mountain in Mauritius, at 812 meters (2664 feet). Only Piton de la Petite Rivière Noire (828 m) and Pieter Both (820 m) are taller. It is named Le Pouce because of the thumb-shaped peak of ...
mountain, and is the only known complete skeleton of an individual dodo. Thirioux donated the specimen to the Museum Desjardins (now Natural History Museum at Mauritius Institute). Thrioux's heirs sold a second mounted composite skeleton (composed of at least two skeletons, with a mainly reconstructed skull) to the
Durban Museum of Natural Science in South Africa in 1918. Together, these two skeletons represent the most completely known dodo remains, including bone elements previously unrecorded (such as knee-caps and wing bones). Though some contemporary writers noted the importance of Thrioux's specimens, they were not scientifically studied, and were largely forgotten until 2011, when sought out by a group of researchers. The mounted skeletons were
laser scanned, from which
3-D models were reconstructed, which became the basis of a 2016 monograph about the
osteology of the dodo. In 2006, explorers discovered a complete skeleton of a dodo in a lava cave in Mauritius. This was only the second associated skeleton of an individual specimen ever found, and the only one in recent times.
Worldwide, 26 museums have significant holdings of dodo material, almost all found in the Mare aux Songes. The Natural History Museum,
American Museum of Natural History,
Cambridge University Museum of Zoology
The University Museum of Zoology is a museum of the University of Cambridge and part of the research community of the Department of Zoology. The public is welcome and admission is free (2018). The Museum of Zoology is in the David Attenborough ...
, the
Senckenberg Museum
The Naturmuseum Senckenberg is a museum of natural history, located in Frankfurt am Main. It is the second-largest of its type in Germany. The museum contains a large and diverse collection of birds with 90,000 bird skins, 5,050 egg sets, 17,0 ...
, and others have almost complete skeletons, assembled from the dissociated subfossil remains of several individuals. In 2011, a wooden box containing dodo bones from the
Edwardian era
The Edwardian era or Edwardian period of British history spanned the reign of King Edward VII, 1901 to 1910 and is sometimes extended to the start of the First World War. The death of Queen Victoria in January 1901 marked the end of the Victor ...
was rediscovered at the
Grant Museum at
University College London
, mottoeng = Let all come who by merit deserve the most reward
, established =
, type = Public research university
, endowment = £143 million (2020)
, budget = ...
during preparations for a move. They had been stored with crocodile bones until then.
White dodo
The supposed "white dodo" (or "solitaire") of Réunion is now considered an erroneous conjecture based on contemporary reports of the
Réunion ibis
The Réunion ibis or Réunion sacred ibis (''Threskiornis solitarius'') is an extinct species of ibis that was endemic to the volcanic island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. The first subfossil remains were found in 1974, and the ibis was firs ...
and 17th-century paintings of white, dodo-like birds by
Pieter Withoos
Pieter Withoos (1655 – 23 April 1692), was a Dutch Golden Age painter.
Withoos was born in Amersfoort. According to Houbraken he was the second son of Mathias Withoos, brother to the painters Johannes, Frans and Alida Withoos. and
Pieter Holsteyn that surfaced in the 19th century. The confusion began when
Willem Ysbrandtszoon Bontekoe, who visited Réunion around 1619, mentioned fat, flightless birds that he referred to as "Dod-eersen" in his journal, though without mentioning their colouration. When the journal was published in 1646, it was accompanied by an engraving of a dodo from Savery's "Crocker Art Gallery sketch". A white, stocky, and flightless bird was first mentioned as part of the Réunion fauna by Chief Officer J. Tatton in 1625. Sporadic mentions were subsequently made by
Sieur Dubois and other contemporary writers.
Baron
Edmond de Sélys Longchamps
Baron Michel Edmond de Selys Longchamps (25 May 1813 – 11 December 1900) was a Belgian Liberal Party politician and scientist. Selys Longchamps has been regarded as the founding figure of odonatology, the study of the dragonflies and damselfl ...
coined the name ''Raphus solitarius'' for these birds in 1848, as he believed the accounts referred to a species of dodo. When 17th-century paintings of white dodos were discovered by 19th-century naturalists, it was assumed they depicted these birds. Oudemans suggested that the discrepancy between the paintings and the old descriptions was that the paintings showed females, and that the species was therefore sexually dimorphic. Some authors also believed the birds described were of a species similar to the Rodrigues solitaire, as it was referred to by the same name, or even that there were white species of both dodo and solitaire on the island.
The Pieter Withoos painting, which was discovered first, appears to be based on an earlier painting by Pieter Holsteyn, three versions of which are known to have existed. According to Hume, Cheke, and Valledor de Lozoya, it appears that all depictions of white dodos were based on Roelant Savery's painting ''Landscape with Orpheus and the animals'', or on copies of it. The painting has generally been dated to 1611, though a post-1614, or even post-1626, date has also been proposed. The painting shows a whitish specimen and was apparently based on a stuffed specimen then in Prague; a ''walghvogel'' described as having a "dirty off-white colouring" was mentioned in an inventory of specimens in the Prague collection of the
Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II, to whom Savery was contracted at the time (1607–1611). Savery's several later images all show greyish birds, possibly because he had by then seen another specimen. Cheke and Hume believe the painted specimen was white, owing to
albinism
Albinism is the congenital absence of melanin in an animal or plant resulting in white hair, feathers, scales and skin and pink or blue eyes. Individuals with the condition are referred to as albino.
Varied use and interpretation of the term ...
.
Valledor de Lozoya has instead suggested that the light plumage was a juvenile trait, a result of bleaching of old taxidermy specimens, or simply artistic license.
In 1987, scientists described fossils of a recently extinct species of
ibis
The ibises () (collective plural ibis; classical plurals ibides and ibes) are a group of long-legged wading birds in the family Threskiornithidae, that inhabit wetlands, forests and plains. "Ibis" derives from the Latin and Ancient Greek word ...
from Réunion with a relatively short beak, ''Borbonibis latipes'', before a connection to the solitaire reports had been made. Cheke suggested to one of the authors, Francois Moutou, that the fossils may have been of the Réunion solitaire, and this suggestion was published in 1995. The ibis was reassigned to the genus ''
Threskiornis
''Threskiornis'' is a genus of ibises, wading birds of the family Threskiornithidae. They occur in the warmer parts of the Old World in southern Asia, Australasia and Sub-Saharan Africa. They are colonial breeders, which build a stick nest in ...
'', now combined with the
specific epithet ' from the
binomial
Binomial may refer to:
In mathematics
*Binomial (polynomial), a polynomial with two terms
* Binomial coefficient, numbers appearing in the expansions of powers of binomials
*Binomial QMF, a perfect-reconstruction orthogonal wavelet decomposition
...
''R. solitarius''. Birds of this genus are also white and black with slender beaks, fitting the old descriptions of the Réunion solitaire. No fossil remains of dodo-like birds have ever been found on the island.
Cultural significance
The dodo's significance as one of the best-known extinct animals and its singular appearance led to its use in literature and popular culture as a symbol of an outdated concept or object, as in the expression "
dead as a dodo," which has come to mean unquestionably dead or obsolete. Similarly, the phrase "
to go the way of the dodo" means to become extinct or obsolete, to fall out of common usage or practice, or to become a thing of the past. "Dodo" is also a slang term for a stupid, dull-witted person, as it was said to be stupid and easily caught.
The dodo appears frequently in works of popular fiction, and even before its extinction, it was featured in European literature, as a symbol for exotic lands, and of gluttony, due to its apparent fatness. In 1865, the same year that George Clark started to publish reports about excavated dodo fossils, the newly vindicated bird was
featured as a character in
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet and mathematician. His most notable works are '' Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865) and its sequ ...
's ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (commonly ''Alice in Wonderland'') is an 1865 English novel by Lewis Carroll. It details the story of a young girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creature ...
''. It is thought that he included the dodo because he identified with it and had adopted the name as a nickname for himself because of his stammer, which made him accidentally introduce himself as "Do-do-dodgson", his legal surname. Carroll and the girl who served as inspiration for Alice,
Alice Liddell
Alice Pleasance Hargreaves (''née'' Liddell, ; 4 May 1852 – 16 November 1934), was an English woman who, in her childhood, was an acquaintance and photography subject of Lewis Carroll. One of the stories he told her during a boating trip beca ...
, had enjoyed visiting the Oxford museum to see the dodo remains there. The book's popularity made the dodo a well-known icon of extinction. Popular depictions of the dodo often became more exaggerated and cartoonish following its ''Alice in Wonderland'' fame, which was in line with the inaccurate belief that it was clumsy, tragic, and destined for extinction.
The dodo is used as a
mascot
A mascot is any human, animal, or object thought to bring luck, or anything used to represent a group with a common public identity, such as a school, professional sports team, society, military unit, or brand name. Mascots are also used as fi ...
for many kinds of products, especially in Mauritius. It appears as a
supporter on the
coat of arms of Mauritius
The coat of arms of Mauritius are stipulated in the "''Mauritius Laws 1990 Vol.2 SCHEDULE (Section 2)''". In the lower left quarter is a key and on the right-hand side is a white star, which are referred to in the Latin motto "Stella Clavisque Ma ...
, on Mauritius coins, is used as a
watermark
A watermark is an identifying image or pattern in paper that appears as various shades of lightness/darkness when viewed by transmitted light (or when viewed by reflected light, atop a dark background), caused by thickness or density variations ...
on all
Mauritian rupee
The Mauritian rupee (sign: Re (singular) and Rs (plural); ISO code: MUR; ) is the currency of Mauritius. One rupee is subdivided into 100 cents. Several other currencies are also called rupee.
Coins
In 1877, coins for 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 cents w ...
banknotes, and features as the background of the Mauritian immigration form. A smiling dodo is the symbol of the
Brasseries de Bourbon, a popular brewer on Réunion, whose emblem displays the white species once thought to have lived there.
The dodo is used to promote the protection of
endangered species by environmental organisations, such as the
Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is a conservation organization with a mission to save species from extinction. Gerald Durrell founded the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust as a charitable institution in 1963 with the dodo as its symbol. T ...
and the
Durrell Wildlife Park
Jersey Zoo (formerly Durrell Wildlife Park) is a zoological park established in 1959 on the island of Jersey in the English Channel by naturalist and writer Gerald Durrell (1925–1995). It is operated by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust. ...
. The
Center for Biological Diversity
The Center for Biological Diversity is a nonprofit membership organization known for its work protecting endangered species through legal action, scientific petitions, creative media and grassroots activism. It was founded in 1989 by Kieran Suckl ...
gives an annual 'Rubber Dodo Award', to "those who have done the most to destroy wild places, species and biological diversity". In 2011, the
nephiline spider ''
Nephilengys dodo'', which inhabits the same woods as the dodo once did, was named after the bird to raise awareness of the urgent need for protection of the Mauritius
biota. Two species of
ant
Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period. More than 13,800 of an estimated total of ...
from Mauritius have been named after the dodo: ''
Pseudolasius dodo'' in 1946 and ''
Pheidole dodo'' in 2013. A species of
isopod from a
coral reef
A coral reef is an underwater ecosystem characterized by reef-building corals. Reefs are formed of colonies of coral polyps held together by calcium carbonate. Most coral reefs are built from stony corals, whose polyps cluster in groups.
C ...
off Réunion was named ''
Hansenium dodo'' in 1991.
The name dodo has been used by scientists naming genetic elements, honouring the dodo's flightless nature. A fruitfly gene within a region of a chromosome required for flying ability was named "dodo". In addition, a defective
transposable element
A transposable element (TE, transposon, or jumping gene) is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Transp ...
family from ''
Phytophthora infestans
''Phytophthora infestans'' is an oomycete or water mold, a fungus-like microorganism that causes the serious potato and tomato disease known as late blight or potato blight. Early blight, caused by '' Alternaria solani'', is also often called "p ...
'' was named ''DodoPi'' as it contained mutations that eliminated the element's ability to jump to new locations in a chromosome.
![Dronte 17th Century color corrected](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Dronte_17th_Century_color_corrected.jpg)
In 2009, a previously unpublished 17th-century Dutch illustration of a dodo went for sale at
Christie's and was expected to sell for £6,000. It is unknown whether the illustration was based on a specimen or on a previous image, and the artist is unidentified. It sold for £44,450.
The poet
Hilaire Belloc
Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (, ; 27 July 187016 July 1953) was a Franco-English writer and historian of the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. H ...
included the following poem about the dodo in his ''
Bad Child's Book of Beasts'' from 1896:
See also
*
Holocene extinction
*
List of African animals extinct in the Holocene
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
*
List of extinct bird species since 1500
Around 129 species of birds have become extinct since 1500, and the rate of extinction seems to be increasing. The situation is exemplified by Hawaii, where 30% of all known recently extinct bird taxa originally lived. Other areas, such as Gua ...
References
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External links
Painting the Dodo Two-minute video about Julian Hume's modern interpretation of Roelant Savery's Dodo
Dodo Bird Unboxing Seven-minute video showing the Oxford specimen being taken out of storage and discussed
Aves3D – ''Raphus cucullatus'': Interactive 3D scans of various dodo elements
{{featured article
Bird extinctions since 1500
Birds described in 1758
Birds of Mauritius
Extinct animals of Mauritius
Extinct birds of Indian Ocean islands
Extinct flightless birds
National symbols of Mauritius
Raphinae
Species made extinct by human activities
Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
Species endangered by use as food