Bird 40 – Dodo

We’ve been on a bit of a flightless kick, so let’s keep it rolling, because it means we get a bird I’ve wanted to cover since day one. A very famous bird,  your friend and mine, the Dodo.

Famous for being an internet provider. Famous also for being dead, stupid, clumsy, fat and flightless. Let’s see what this zany bird was all about.

The Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) was a member of the order Columbiformes and … wait a second … Columbiformes‽ – GASP! We all remember who those ones are. That’s right, the Dodo was actually a pigeon! A giant, flightless pigeon; what a twist. Ya’ll knew it was only a matter of time until another sneaky pigeon turned up. The first person to suggest the Dodo was a pigeon got laughed out of the Royal Society; well now who’s laughing?

Anyway, the old Dodo lived on the island of Mauritius, and as it evolved away from any major predator the bird was fearless, gallant. Noble. Majestic even… I seem to have lost my train of thought.

Contrary to popular belief the Dodo was not widely eaten by sailors, even though they were dead easy to catch. Their flesh was described as being tough and not particularly tasty, (unlike the Passenger Pigeon which was so delicious we had to eat 5 billion of them, am I right [see Bird of the Week 34]).

Rather, the thing that wiped them out were introduced species and habitat degradation, which yeah, we were kinda responsible for as well. The Dodo was last sighted in 1662, however it wasn’t accepted to be extinct until the 18^th Century, for religious reasons. No kidding, apparently back then the concept of extinction didn’t factor in with western religion, so there you go.  

Now here’s a fact – there is no complete specimen of a Dodo anywhere, so if you ever saw a display of one, it was a lie.

There is also only one example of soft tissue in existence. Which looks a little something like this:

Actually, it looks exactly like that.

The Dodo only survived human discovery for about 60 years. Because it was only around for a short time, many people didn’t even believe it was a real, but some mythical thing.

But no, no, it was a bird, and what a bird.

27/08/2018