In the age of exploration man discovered wonderful creatures on every beach on which they landed. One of the creatures they found was the Dodo. We never found out what the bird was good for as in our attempts to exploit them we managed to kill them all. This is a sad story, let's not let it happen again.

The Dodo

Common name Dodo, plurall either Dodos or Dodoes, alternative name Dronte. Perhaps the name is derived from
Dod-aarsen: stupid ass,
Dodors: from dot-ors; tuft of feathers-tail,
Dodars: silly birds or
Dodoor: sluggard. Also used were
Walgvogel,
Walghvogel: nauseating bird, these are all Dutch and German based names.
Doudo,
Doudou: foolish and simple, simpleton, as the Portugese and Spanish visitors called them.

Original latin name given by Carl Linnaeus¹:Didus ineptus
scientific name classification:Raphus cucullatus³.

Dodos lived on Mauritius, one of the Mascarene Islands, a volcanic island in the Indian Ocean just north east of Madagascar for quite possibly millions of years. Dodos evolved, on these islands, from a flying bird to the friendly walking bird the first humans found.

This first contact with humanity was made by Portuguese sailors and Dutch colonisers in the sixteenth century. The islands were on the downwind track of their trade routes. These sailors and colonists were amused by the friendly, easy to catch birds and slaughtered them for food.

How to prepare a Dodo for dinner:

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  Pluck the feathers.
  

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  Put it in a water filled pan and let it boil for a day, two for older birds.
  

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  Then use a sharp knife to get some of the meat from the bones.
  

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  Serve with some fruits ( mango ) to make it taste like something. Keep a few toothpicks to clean your teeth after every bite.
  

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  Instead of only eating the flesh, you can also make a nice soup with the boiling water.
  

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  Give the remainder ( probably most ) to the dogs.
  

What else to serve these hungry hardworking sailors?

If not eaten the Dodo was just happy running or staggering around his island⁴. With their specialised long crooked and hooked beak they ate fruits, seeds or nuts. Dodos seemed to eat stones and rocks, and perhaps some sea fruits. They will not have had any natural enemies. The nest to lay their egg was just a clearing on the ground covered with grass. The Dodo laid the single big egg hidden deep in the forest. She would use her large beak to defend herself and the chick.

Dodo heritage

There has been research extracting DNA from the ramains of a Dodo to find out where they came from. The fragmented DNA strings showed a close relation to the Nicobar pigeon Caloenas nicobarica. There has been an Asian pigeon from which the Dodo and Nicobar diverged about 42 million years ago. At present scientists are not capable of recombining the DNA fragments for an attempt to reconstruct the genetic material.

Dodo Facts

The only verified facts about the Dodo are:

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  They have lived on Mauritius and they have not been seen after 1681.
  

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  This pigeon-descended bird could not fly as the breast bone would not be able to support the strong muscles for flight.
  

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  Like many island-evolved creatures they had grown to huge sizes. Although the actual weight of a healthy adult is unknown they are supposed to weigh up to twenty three kilogrammes. Their head would reach as high as a meter (about three feet).
  

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  They had a long crooked and hooked beak, suitable for eating fruits and seeds.
  

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  Their face was bare skin and they had yellow eyes. The head and body were covered with soft, grey feathers. On the wings and tail they had some longer white feathers.
  

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  The Dodo had stout yellow legs. The skeleton studies suggest their hipbone was positioned more upright then ususal for a bird.
  

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  The Feet had four toes, three facing forward and one, like a thumb, facing back. Each toe had a thick black claw.
  

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  There is only one known skeleton of a Dodo, on display in the American Museum of Natural History. A head and a foot are preserved in Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Some of our field workers have found other dodo skeletons on display, these are however not confirmed by 'official' sources.
  

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  The few pictures that have been drawn with the birds, have been made without a healthy living specimen.
  

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  The birds are extinct.
  

Contradictions

Did we eat these birds or not?

Some stories report the dodo was easy to catch and herding them to the ship for slaughter. Other stories state no Dodo bones were found in the mittens⁵, besides they were called Walghvogel. Perhaps the ships used them as provision while the colonists had something better.

What did the Dodo eat?

Many animals use stones to to aid digestion by grinding hard bits of food. This confirms the Dodo could eat fruits, seeds and nuts. Also many animals need additional minerals. Especially birds, as many keep their beak in condition by rubbing it against stones. Volcanic islands do not have much limestone. Instead of shellfish the birds would have eaten, shells would be a more likely alternative as their only source for chalk.

Was there a relation with the Dodo Tree?

The extinction of the dodo was once believed to endanger the Calvaria tree Sideroxylon grandiflorum. The seeds would only sprout after digestion and this seemed not to have happened since the extinction of the Dodo. Research has proven the seeds can also be digested by turkeys, which have been introduced to Mauritius for the replacement of the Dodo. This strongly suggests the birds did eat the fruits of this tree. The tree is now given the common name of Dodo tree. Recent more accurate tree datings point the extinction of the Broad-billed Parrot Lophopsittacus mauritianus as them being alternative seed digestors. This tree however looks different from the young ones if it gets over 300 years old. This has led to the idea the tree was going extict. The question remains if the Dodo had anything to do with this tree.

How active did a healty Dodo live?

They had relatively short legs, upright compared to related birds. The weight difference of the birds was suggested to follow a seasonal pattern. Later on bone fragments were forensical analysed as belonging to on average rather athletic animals. This does not exclude one or the other, their can have been a monsoon low active period and a dry active (or the other way around).

Flocking or Solitaire?

The Solitaire was another species on another Island, these where named this way for living in solitary pairs. There is at least one report about a Dodo mother defending her chick. Animals that do not live in large groups can not be easily herded together, like the sailors did. Both suggest they did live in groups. Watching each others white tail they could stay together in the woods.

Dodo: a kind of flightless pigeon weighing up to 22 kilos