Interesting Facts About Dodos
Interesting Facts About Dodos
Image Source: "Oxford Dodo display" by BazzaDaRambler - Oxford University Museum of Natural History ... dodo - dead
apparently.Uploaded by FunkMonk. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons -
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxford_Dodo_display.jpg#/media/File:Oxford_Dodo_display.jpg
2. The Dodo, a large, flightless pigeon found on the island of Mauritius until the seventeenth century, is probably today’s greatest icon of extinction. Its very name is synonymous with the extinction process, and this single species is rivalled in its unenviable position only by the dinosaurs, which instead represent an entire superorder of several hundred known species.
3. As one of the earliest species to be identified as extinct, the Dodo gained tremendous celebrity throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and continues to represent a source of considerable fascination and interest in popular culture today.
4. The Dodo species group (formerly Raphidae) consisted of at least four similar flightless birds called "didine" birds that lived in similar, but different, habitats. These are the Dodo of Mauritius, the White Dodo, the Solitaire of Reunion, and the Rodriguez Solitaire.
5. Illustrations and reconstructions often show the Dodo as a magnificently overweight, pigeon-like bird that allegedly had a "large body and small wings, far too small to permit him to fly". The most famous reconstruction of the Dodo was conducted in the taxidermy studio of Roland Ward in London.
6. The dodo is the most famous of all the creatures to have become extinct in historical times. It was immortalised in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and was a favourite for Dodgson who had a stammer: Do-do-dodgson.
7. The earliest accounts of the Dodos by the Dutch navigator, Admiral Jacob Corneliszoon van Neck, date from 1598. The Dodos were first found on an island he named Mauritius in honor of his patron, Prince Maurice of Nassau, ruler of the Netherlands.
8. Since the birds were easy to capture, within a short time the Dutch colonists (along with sailors and visitors) soon killed most of the Dodo population.
9. By about 1690, the Mauritius Dodo was extinct, and the White Dodo became extinct in about 1770.
10. It is estimated that the average dodo weighed anywhere from 45 to 50 pounds.
11. Its wings were small and incapable of flight. The dodo was covered in soft, grey feathers, with a plume of white at its tail, and its legs were short, stubby, and yellow in color.
12. Its feet each had four toes, three in front and one angled to the back that served as a thumb, with thick, black claws.
13. The head was reported to be lighter grey than the body, and the dodo possessed a long, thick, hooked beak, which was either light green or pale yellow in color.
14. Since the Dodo couldn’t fly, they nested on the ground, laying a single egg in a thick nest of grass.
15. It is also unclear what the Dodos ate. Some birds were reported to wade in the shallow water at the shore, searching for fish, but the most remarked upon eating habit of the dodo was their need to swallow stones. The stones probably helped digestion.
16. Also, the seeds from the Calvaria tree on the island of Mauritius could only sprout and grow after they had gone through the digestive system of the dodo.
17. The seed of a Calvaria tree was very hard and needed the dodo bird to crack it. The tree depended on the dodo and when the dodo became extinct, the tree became endangered.
Image source: Right half of the Oxford specimen's head
"Oxford Dodo head" by gnomonic - https://www.flickr.com/photos/28120556@N08/19974514330/. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oxford_Dodo_head.jpg#/media/File:Oxford_Dodo_head.jpg
18. DNA research has shown the dodo is closely related to pigeons and has finally resolved the question of the dodo’s ancestry; without the Oxford specimens this would have been impossible.
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