![]() However, humans were not the only predators. Its consumption became common and most appreciated by those living on the island. So it was with lack of fears and child-like innocence that those birds greeted the first settlers, the Dutch, in 1598. They were passive creatures even when approached by human visitors for the first time. The Dodo birds had no experience of any types of predators before the arrival of settlers in the island. This is how the fauna and flora of the island deteriorated including also the Dodo.ĭue to its short wings and bulky body the dodo could not fly or flee in the face of danger and as such the Dodo was a very easy prey. The latter thus had to find some food sources inland itself in order to feed themselves. The human population of Mauritius increased drastically -sailors, invalids, convicts and slaves came to settle on the island. Forests were destroyed in order to make way for imported crops such as sugar cane, rice, tobacco, indigo, vegetables and citrus trees, which were planted at the base of the mountains. The Dutch eventually decided to settle in Mauritius in 1634, and they built a fort near to the place where they had originally landed. The Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, and thus became the first recorded Europeans to sail into the Indian Ocean. 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.The small island of Mauritius remained uninhabited by man for thousands of years, apparently because the island is in the middle of the large Indian Ocean, and was not on a major sea route.Īccording to history, around 1000 AD Arabs were sailing and trading along the African coast as far south as Mozambique and the Comoros Islands, and they probably called on Mauritius, although there is no mention of it on their early maps. 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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