![]() ![]() Among these is a dried head, the only soft tissue of the dodo that remains today. 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. Its extinction was not immediately noticed, and some considered it to be a myth. The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in 1662. In the following years, the bird was hunted by sailors and invasive species, while its habitat was being destroyed. The first recorded mention of the dodo was by Dutch sailors in 1598. 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. ![]() One account states its clutch consisted of a single egg. ![]() It used gizzard stones to help digest its food, which is thought to have included fruits, and its main habitat is believed to have been the woods in the drier coastal areas of Mauritius. 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. Though the dodo has historically been considered fat and clumsy, it is now thought to have been well-adapted for its ecosystem. As these vary considerably, and only some of the illustrations are known to have been drawn from live specimens, its exact appearance in life remains unresolved, and little is known about its behaviour. The dodo's appearance in life is evidenced only by drawings, paintings, and written accounts from the 17th century. Subfossil remains show the dodo was about 1 metre (3 ft 3 in) tall and may have weighed 10.6–17.5 kg (23–39 lb) in the wild. A white dodo was once thought to have existed on the nearby island of Réunion, but this is now believed to have been confusion based on the also-extinct Réunion ibis and paintings of white dodos. The closest living relative of the dodo is the Nicobar pigeon. The dodo's closest genetic relative was the also-extinct Rodrigues solitaire, the two forming the subfamily Raphinae of the family of pigeons and doves. The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. “The Last Dodo” may very well have been a single lonely chick or egg somewhere in the jungle, that a scurrying rat came upon and decided to feast unaware that he or she, after a million years’ journey, was the last, the very last of them all.Wikipedia Rate this definition: 0.0 / 0 votes The gentle trusting dodos paid the ultimate price. But there was no way to hide the nests and chicks from the pigs and the rats. It’s small consolation, but it is known that many of their hunters were bloodied by the dodo’s enormous hooked beak, in perhaps what was their last act of defiance. Many even became more cautious of human hunters, and adapted their behavior. If it weren’t for these marauding animals, the dodo may have been able to survive the onslaught of just the sailors and settlers hunting them on the 800 square miles of Mauritius. Even those that had nested in remote places, soon had their young chicks or eggs consumed by the invaders. The dodo as a species didn’t have a chance at that point, and they were doomed. None of the nests were safe from foraging wild pigs and a multitude of newly introduced rats. It didn’t take long for the production of new baby dodo chicks to take a very steep decline. The mother dodo would only lay one egg per season. They actually sealed the fate of the dodo by eating all the dodo eggs they could find that were all on the ground in the simple unprotected dodo nests. Cats were brought as working “pets.” So pigs and rats flourished in the wild, as they also had no natural enemies there. Sailors always had a way of letting pigs or goats escape on various islands they visited. There were never any rats on the island until they came with the ships and came ashore. Yes, many were collected by the Dutch sailors and settlers, but there was something else that had a larger impact on their eventual extinction, invasive animals that the sailors brought with them on their ships namely, rats, cats and pigs that went feral. One can only imagine what they were thinking when the tall two-legged visitors began massacring them. Fearless curiosity, rather than stupidity, is a more fitting description of their behavior. They were just trusting of humans because they’d never seen any other animal that was able to hurt them in any way. This in itself is a very sad story, since there was nothing “stupid” about the dodo (as they are infamously but wrongly known). Yes, the sailors hunted down many of the trusting birds simply by walking up to them and picking them up or using a machete on them. ![]()
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