![]() And with no predators to be feared from, flying was just an unnecessary waste of energy. Their size was merely a product of the abundance of food. Without significant predators and an abundance of food, they were living in an animal paradise.įrom an evolutionary point of view, the dodo’s size and inability to fly were just an adaptation to its environment. In less than a century humans have done what nature couldn’t do for millions of years.ĭodo birds inhabited the isolated island of Mauritius. The first written records of the dodo bird were by Dutch sailors in 1598, and the last dodo bird anyone has seen was in 1662. Because of this, the last sighting of 1662 is taken as the only credible source of the dodo extinction. Visitors to the island may have confused the red rail with the dodo, therefore the belief they weren’t extinct. However, according to Alfred Newton, a British ornithologist, after their extinction, the name dodo was transferred to the red rail, a different bird species from the island. ![]() Other written records also show sightings of dodo birds after 1662. According to Isaac Johannes Lamotius, and his hunting reports, the last dodo bird was seen in 1688. Several written records suggest they didn’t go extinct in 1662. There is a lot of controversy about the date of the dodo’s extinction. In less than a century from its discovery, the dodo bird was already extinct. Their extinction was not noticed right away, however, it did happen very quickly. They can be seen in the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. In the early 17th century, several specimens were brought to Europe, however, it’s uncertain how many of them had survived.Īmong those specimens probably were the dried head and foot, the only soft tissues of a dodo bird we have today. The last sighting of a dodo bird, according to a written report by Volkert Evertsz, a shipwrecked mariner of the Dutch ship Arnhem, was in 1662. However, such drawings would largely have been created by artists who had never witnessed a dodo in real life.įrom modern analysis of fossilized skeletons, it appears that dodos may have been a lot slimmer and more streamlined than the overweight, comical bird we have become used to seeing in picture books and cartoons.Final Thoughts When did the dodo bird go extinct? We can draw inferences from preserved dodo skeletons, as well as from several exaggerated cartoon-style sketches or paintings that were popular in the 1600s. This difference in plumage could likely be explained by an annual molting pattern.ĭodos became extinct several hundred years before the advent of photography, so again, we have no conclusive evidence to support what dodos looked like. Dodos had stout, scaly yellow legs, with sharp talons on their three-toed feet.ĭodo feathers were described as being anything from black to a lighter shade of grayish-white. Their undeveloped wings support the observations that they were flightless. ![]() Less than 100 years after these first sightings, what caused these hook-beaked flightless giants to disappear forever? Read on, as we attempt to piece together the reasons for one of the most famous examples of species decline ever recorded.ĭodos were tall, thickset birds, with long hooked beaks around 23 cm (9 in) long on their heads, which were gray and featherless. Later visitors to the island did not mention the unusual birds, a fact that historians use as a basis to judge when dodos became extinct.ĭutch sailors were the first to spot the “great quantity of foules twise as bigge as swans” in 1598, and later observations noted the birds’ trusting and serene nature when being approached and captured. The last recorded sighting of a dodo was by Dutch sailor Volkert Evertsz, who was shipwrecked on Amber Island, off the coast of Mauritius in 1662. But how much do we know about when they became extinct, and is it even possible to accurately state when the last dodo on the planet died? Read on to learn what our research into these questions found out. With no records of living dodos beyond the end of the 17th century, they are one of the world’s best-known examples of an extinct species. “As dead as a dodo” is a familiar saying, used to indicate that a person or a situation has gone way beyond hope of revival. ![]()
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