11 Things We Know About the Dodo

The first thing one must accept when trying to identify the dodo is that we will probably never know much about this flightless bird, which became extinct over 300 years ago in one of, if not the, first birds. the First: human-caused extinctions. However, careful study of surviving documents and specimens, as well as a little science, has revealed little about the dodo.

1. The dodo bird lived in Mauritius.
2. The nickname dodo came from the Portuguese.
3. The dodo was probably monogamous.
4. Although calm and unafraid of humans, the dodo was able to defend itself.
5. The dodo bird went to Europe.
6. The dodo was portrayed as fat and awkward, but it was (probably) not so.
7. The last dodo was seen in July 1681.
8. There are no complete specimens of the dodo from a single bird.
9. Many people did not believe that the dodo actually existed.
10. The dodo was essentially a large dove.
11. The dodo had two cousins ​​that are also extinct.

The dodo bird lived in Mauritius.

The Portuguese discovered Mauritius, part of a chain of three islands east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, in 1507; Although they set up a base there, they soon abandoned the island. It was the Dutch who named it after Prince Maurice van Nassau, in 1598, which is when they also found the dodo. Vice Admiral Wybran van Warwick described the bird in his diary:

“Blue parrots are very numerous there, as are other birds, and among them is a species remarkable for its size, larger than our swan, and with huge heads only half covered with skin as if covered with a hood. These birds have no wings, in their places stand out 3 or 4 black feathers. The tail consists of a few soft, arched feathers, and is grey.”

In 1634, Sir Thomas Herbert (who visited Mariotius in 1627) described the dodo in his book. The relationship of some years of work to Africa and Greater Asia:

“First and only here…the dodo was created…its body is round and fat, and a few of them weigh less than fifty pounds. It is reputed to be more wondrous than food, and fat worms may seek it out, but to the sensitive it is degrading and unfeeding. Its appearance exudes sadness, as is felt for the injury of nature in fashioning a body so great it can be directed with perfect wings, so small and helpless, that it only serves to prove Her bird. Its head is half bare and appears to be covered with a soft covering, its beak is curled downwards, and in the middle is a nostril, the part of which to the end is light green, mingled with a pale yellow tint; Her eyes are small, diamond-like, round and wavy; Her clothes are made of soft feathers, her tail is three small plumes, short and disproportionate, her legs fit her body, her swoops are sharp, her appetite Powerful and greedy. Stones and iron are digested, which description can best be conceived in representing them.

You may also like…

Add the mental thread as Favorite news source!

The nickname dodo came from the Portuguese.

The Dutch called it com. walghvodelOr the “disgusting bird” because of the toughness of its meat. “The longer and more frequently they were cooked,” Van Warwick wrote in 1598, “the less tender they became and the more delicious they became to eat. However, their bellies and breasts were of a pleasant flavor and easily chewed.”

But the name stuck, according to Clara Pinto Correa in her book Return of the crazy birdderived from the old Portuguese word forest (The modern word is crazy) meaning foolish or foolish. Pinto Correa writes that by the end of the 17th century, there were an astonishing 78 words for the bird. It had a number of scientific names, and Carl Linnaeus tried to name it Silly dudeor “The Misfit Dodo” in 1766, but the bird that stuck around was Rafus is masked (Latin for “bustard” and “masked” respectively), which was given to the dodo in 1760.

The dodo was probably monogamous.

He has been described as “devoted to his mate and loyal to his chicks.” They also probably laid only one egg at a time in ground nests. This slow reproduction (as well as the fact that the eggs make for easy meals for predators) spelled disaster for the species.

Although calm and unafraid of humans, the dodo was able to defend itself.

in Crazy birdsPinto Correa recounts the massacre of the dodo birds, which occurred long before anyone settled in Mauritius; In one account, sailors killed as many as 25 birds to bring them back to the ship. But there is one description of the birds that fight back: “One sailor wrote that if men were not careful, the birds inflicted serious wounds on assailants with their strong beaks,” Pinto Correa wrote.

The dodo bird went to Europe.

No one knows for sure how many birds there were – Julian Pender-Hume, a bird paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, estimates that four or five were shipped with only one or two arriving alive, while others estimate that as many as 14 or 17 birds may have made the journey. But there is evidence that at least a few of them made it there alive. One was probably brought to Europe by Admiral Jacob Cornelius van Neck, who sent the bird to Prague and Habsburg Rudolf II, King of Austria and King of Bohemia and Hungary, in 1600 (more on that in a moment).

Theologian and writer Sir Hamon Lestrange saw the dodo on display as a public attraction in London in 1683. books:

“It was kept in a room, and it was a large bird somewhat larger than the largest turkey, with large legs and feet, but sturdier and thicker and more upright, and previously colored like the breast of a cockerel, and on its back a dark or dark color. The keeper called it a dodo, and at the end of the chimney in the room there was a heap of large cobblestones, of which he gave many before our eyes, some of them like walnuts. The good food, and the Hafiz told us that she eats it.

The dodo was portrayed as fat and awkward, but it was (probably) not so.

When we imagine the dodo, we often think of a depiction from one painting in particular – the one above. It was created by Rudolf II’s court painter, Rolandt Savery, in 1626 (and gifted to the British Museum by George Edwards in 1759). According to Pinto Correa, Savery left the court after Rudolf’s death and thereafter often painted the bird from memory, which likely led to inaccuracies. It is also unknown whether Savery painted a live bird or not Creating his paintings From contemporary novels and dead specimens.

In any case, scientists believe that birds may have been extracted from it Excessive captive subjects Or from stuffed specimens. It is also possible for the weight of birds in the wild to fluctuate greatly depending on the availability of food.

The first reconstruction of the dodo was created in 1865 by Richard Owen at the Natural History Museum using fossilized bones and an outline of the bird from one of Savery’s paintings. Its reconstruction and scientific description were published, but three years later, Owens realized that he had been wrong. However, it is too late to change public perception. Recent evidence suggests that the dodo would have been more upright, with a thinner neck and chest – because flightless birds did not need large breast muscles.

The last dodo was seen in July 1681.

Englishman Benjamin Harry, his first mate on the British ship Berkeley CastleHe was the last person to discover the dodo bird in Mauritius and wrote about it:

“Now, after a little rest, I will give a little description: first the products and parts of the island—first the winged and feathered birds, the least fleeting, the dodos whose flesh is so tough, a little species of geese of reasoning…”

Sometime afterward—just eight decades after the Dutch landed—the bird succumbed to extinction caused by hunting, habitat destruction, and the introduction of invasive species such as rats and pigs.

There are no complete specimens of the dodo from a single bird.

The dodo skeletons you see in museums were assembled from fossilized remains. However, at some point, there was a complete sample. The bird Belongs to John Tradescant It was presented to the Natural History Museum at Oxford University in the 1680s. today, Head only– which still has soft tissue – and the foot remains; The museum burned the rest of the bird on January 8, 1755, due to severe decomposition, unaware that it was the last complete specimen in the world.

Many people did not believe that the dodo actually existed.

You can’t blame naturalists who lived 150 years after the dodo’s extinction for thinking it was a creature created by sailors. As Hugh Edwin Strickland and Alexander Melville wrote as they presented their argument for the presence of the bird in… The dodo and its relatives, Published in 1848:

“So rapid and complete was their extinction that the vague descriptions given of them by the first navigators were for a long time considered fantastic or exaggerated, and these birds…became associated in the minds of many people with the mythical griffins and phoenixes of antiquity.”

The dodo was essentially a large dove.

During its life and after its extinction, scientists were unable to determine the type of dodo, they grouped it with chickens, eagles, vultures, penguins or cranes. But some scientists, including Johannes Theodor Reinhardt, Hugh Edwin Strickland, Alexander Gordon Melville, and Samuel Cabot, thought the bird looked a lot like a little pigeon, and they were right. In 2007, biologist Beth Shapiro ran an analysis on a DNA sample carefully extracted from the leg bone of the Oxford remains and found that the dodo was a bird. far relative From the dove.

The dodo had two cousins ​​that are also extinct.

One of them was solitaire (Solitary bizofabs) – so named because it is rarely seen with other birds – is a gray and brown flightless bird with a long neck, about the size of a swan, that lives in Rodrigues. It was eradicated by the 1760s. The other was called the “White Dodo” in Reunion (Didos Bourbon It was later called the Sacred Ibis Reunion,Threskiornis is solitaryIt is a yellowish-white bird with black wings. In a 1614 account (published in 1626), English sailor John Tatton described the bird as “a large bird about the size of a turkey, very fat, and so short-winged that it cannot fly, and being white, and somehow tame… In general, these birds are so abundant in these islands that ten sailors can gather enough in one day to feed forty.” At least two birds were shipped to Europe in 1685, but after that there are no longer any accounts; In an 1801 survey of Reunion, none of the birds were found.

A version of this story was published in 2013; Updated for 2025.