![]() Until recently, the last confirmed dodo sighting on its home island of Mauritius was made in 1662, but a 2003 estimate by David Roberts and Andrew Solow placed the extinction of the bird around 1690. It has not been very long since we lost the dodo – only about three centuries – but the exact date has been difficult to pin down. ![]() In order to understand the legacy of the dodo, a little background on its demise is required. The dodo looked so stupid because we made it so. Notes, skeletal scraps, a disregard for soft-tissue anatomy, and a bit of artistic license created this symbol of extinction. What other fate could there have been for such a foolish-looking ground pigeon? A grotesque, tubby creature with huge nostrils and a ridiculous little poof of tail feathers, Raphus cucullatus had the air of a bird that stood still with a blank stare as the scythe of extinction lopped off its head.īut the dodo I have always known is not a true reflection of the bird. I hate to say it, but the dodo looked as if it deserved extinction. – Charlotte Turner Smith, A natural history of birds: intended chiefly for young persons, 1807 Its history is little known but if the representation of it be at all just, this is the ugliest and most disgusting of birds, resembling in its appearance one of those bloated and unwieldy persons who by a long course of vicious and gross indulgences are become a libel on the human figure. Washington Post: Were dodos as dumb as they looked? New research suggests otherwise.The Dodo, Didus, is a bird that inhabits some of the islands of the East Indies. Photograph by Ballista, courtesy Wikimedia. Dodo is most likely related to the Dutch word “dodaars ,” which means “fat-ass.” (Science!) Dodaars probably referred to the tuft of feathers on the bird’s backside. keep them docile and overfed until slaughtering time.” (The meat, it’s worth noting, was not very good, and hunters had to watch out for that great big beak.)įun Fact: The name “dodo” probably doesn’t refer do the big bird’s intelligence. In other words, the birds had “never encountered humans and didn’t know enough to fear us-and they looked comically plump because hungry sailors fattened them up.(Although dodos’ native habitat, the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, had been visited by Arab traders for centuries, the first permanent settlement-a Dutch colony-was not established until 1638. Just 30 years before their extinction, most dodos had never encountered the world’s Apex Predator #1. ![]() If dodos weren’t dumbos, how did they get their dim-bulb reputation?.The dodo’s brain was “about the same size (relative to body mass) one would see in modern pigeons.” Pigeons are the dodo’s closest living relatives ( see a resemblance?) and fairly smart birds-they can navigate across long and varied terrain, be trained as couriers, and even be taught to read mammograms.(“I was not on a mission to redeem the dodo, but that’s what it turned out to be,” says lead author Eugenia Gold.) The dodo’s brain case was much larger than most people expected.What was surprising about the new endocast of the dodo?.An endocast is an internal cast (impression) of a hollow object, usually referring to the brain case or cranial vault of an animal.The name of the new research paper is “The first endocast of the extinct dodo.” What is an endocast?.Painting by Cornelis Saftleven, courtesy the Boijmans Museum and Wikimedia. This is probably the last illustration of a dodo drawn from life. The painting was completed in 1638, just 24 years before the species was driven to extinction. The dodo never looked more dignified than in it does in this gorgeous watercolor by the Dutch Old Master Cornelis Saftleven. Scroll down for a quick list of key resources in our Teachers’ Toolkit. ![]() Use our resources to catch up on other bird-brains. Dodos, best known for being dead and, well, dumb, may not have been total doofuses.
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