The Mysterious Extinct Dodo Bird

The Dodo Might be the Most Famous Extinct Bird, but We Don’t Actually Know Very Much About It.

Aug 18, 2006 Rosemary Drisdelle

Dodos were extinct by 1700, and we don't know much about them. Read some interesting facts about Dodos - big, flightless, fruit loving, isolated by ocean, and doomed.

The Dodo bird is extinct. We all know that. Most of us envision the Dodo as a large round awkward bird with a big plume of tail feathers and an enormous beak - which is mostly correct, except for the awkward part - but do we know anything else about it? What family it belonged to? Where it lived? What it ate? What caused the extinction of the Dodo bird? If you've ever wondered about these things, read on for some interesting

Dodo bird history:

• The Dodo bird was a member of the Columbidae, or pigeons. We know this because some soft tissue of a Dodo was available for DNA testing. The closest relative to the Dodo still alive today is the Nicobar pigeon.
• Dodo birds lived only on the island of Mauritius, an island about the size of Rhode Island in the Indian Ocean. It is thought that their ancestors, originally from Southeast Asia, flew there some time during the last 8 million years and then evolved into a flightless, isolated species.
• An adult Dodo was about a meter long (3 ft) and weighed as much as 20 kg (44 lb). It was grey and had small wings. Though flightless, it was probably quite agile.
• Dodos ate seeds and fruits, readily available on the forest floor in Mauritius. With a generous food supply on the ground and no predators, Dodos didn't need to fly.
• At one time it was thought that Calvaria trees were dependent on the Dodo for reproduction: the Dodos ate the seeds and cracked the seed coat, passing viable seeds in their feces. The theory has been discounted however, and Calvaria trees are still with us.
• Dodo birds were not good to eat. Although they were large and easy to kill, the Dutch settlers on the island called them "walckvogel," or "disgusting bird." Apparently Dodo meat is very tough.
• The extinction of the Dodo bird was complete by the end of the 17th century. No one knows exactly why it died out, but hunting, habitat loss, and competition with introduced animals such as pigs and monkeys probably combined to doom the species.
• Despite the fact that Dodo birds lived in historical times, no complete skeletal remains and very few preserved parts of the extinct Dodo bird were collected, a oversight that has made it very difficult to study the bird in its absence. A recent find of many Dodo bird fossils in Mauritius (see my blog for this story), complete with other preserved pieces of the ecosystem, will answer many questions.

Sources for this article:

Extinct Dodo Related to Pigeons, DNA Shows. Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News, February 28, 2002.

Raphus cucullatus

Newfound Island Graveyard May Yield Clues to Dodo Life of Long Ago. Carl Zimmer, New York Times, July 4, 2006.

The copyright of the article The Mysterious Extinct Dodo Bird in Birds is owned by Rosemary Drisdelle. Permission to republish The Mysterious Extinct Dodo Bird in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

14 Comments

Comments

Aug 22, 2006 2:03 AM

Timbre Beck-Murphy :

The movie Ice Age and folklore have pegged the dod as a definite "bird brain." Do you think this was the case?

Timbre
http://figurespeedskating.suite101.com

Aug 24, 2006 4:43 AM

Rosemary Drisdelle :

:-) That's the stereotype, but no - Dodo's were probably neither stupid nor slow. Being a flightless bird on an island was obviously a huge disadvantage once predators (humans) appeared: it would have made them, um, sitting ducks... so that's probably where the dumbo idea came from.

Nov 16, 2008 2:41 PM

Guest :

cool, i never new so much about the dodo until now

Dec 4, 2008 2:09 PM

Guest :

wow!

Jan 9, 2009 5:55 AM

Guest :

Did the Dodo bird live in the ice age?

Jan 9, 2009 7:24 AM

Rosemary Drisdelle :

I think it's safe to say yes. The most recent ice age peaked about 20,000 years ago, and experts talk about Dodo Bird evolution happening over millions of years, so the species may have lived through several ice ages. Mauritius is fairly close to the equator - a good place to be when the climate is cooling.

Mar 1, 2009 5:30 PM

Guest :

When the Homo-Safiens came in the dodo bird had no time to adapt or anything

Mar 12, 2009 7:17 AM

Guest :

very interesting! lol xx

Apr 15, 2009 9:00 PM

Guest :

I read somewhere else that the dodo birds went extinct mostly because of what you said with the introduction of other animals. But also from the Portuguese exploration of the island

May 19, 2009 2:31 AM

Guest :

cool, that you know all the things of the dodo.
But I ask you some QUESTIONs , What does the dodo eat?
where is the dodo bird picture and I want is REAL want!

May 19, 2009 4:02 AM

Rosemary Drisdelle :

There's more information about the Dodo bird here: http://birds.suite101.com/article.cfm/world_of_the_dodo_birds_revealed

Many people are asking the same questions. Scientists are trying to discover the diet of the Dodo bird from collections of fossil remains. As it says in the article above, it's thought Dodos ate fruits and seeds - things they would find on the ground - but the answer is, at least for now, we just don't know for sure.
Good luck finding a photograph of a Dodo bird - they were extinct long before cameras were invented and, sadly, no one was paying much attention. To see pictures of what we think they looked like, type "dodo bird picture" in the Google search bar, then click on "Image results for dodo bird picture."

Aug 19, 2009 12:09 PM

Guest :

we are about the birds it is so bad about how they died i wish they would have them at the zoo so i can see one

Jan 11, 2010 4:59 PM

Guest :

This was a very good article! It was very informative and was very helpful for my report. The Dodo Bird was a very interesting animal.

Jan 19, 2010 1:27 PM

Guest :

it really cool it gave me alot of info for my scince project

14 Comments