Some sources claim that the name came from 16th century Portuguese sailors who called them ‘doudo’, meaning ‘fool’ or ‘crazy.’ The word ‘dodo’ isn’t exactly kind either.Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus, who devised the modern system of naming organisms, bought into the misconception that dodos were clumsy and stupid.In reference to this, and the dodo’s portly frame, they called the dodos ‘kermisgans.’ The day after they weighed anchor in Mauritius, the Dutch crew of the Gelderland observed the festival of Kermesse, which involved eating fattened fowl.They called the dodo ‘walchvögel’ or ‘repulsive bird.’ Seafarers who ate dodo meat, described it as tough and unpleasant.The Dutch sailors of the day dubbed dodos as ‘dodaersen’ or ‘fat-arses,’ because of the birds’ generously-proportioned backsides.The meat was described as ‘offensive and of no nourishment.’ Dutch sailors carried the dead birds back to their ships, where they chopped them up and turned them into stews. Is it wrong to ask if dodos tasted of chicken? In this resource-rich environment, it also evolved to become bigger, until there came a point where it could no longer leave the ground. The dodo is descended from a much smaller, airborne pigeon which landed in Mauritius sometime in the last 7 million years.Īt the time, there were no terrestrial mammals around to eat it, and so gradually, the bird began to fly less and walk more. Scientists could create a genetic doppelgänger of a Tasmanian Tiger?.What is the dodo’s closest living relative?.These ‘gastroliths’ were retained in the bird’s muscular gizzard, where they helped to grind up fibrous material. Like many of today’s birds, dodos also swallowed stones, to help with digestion. It may also have eaten seafood items, such as shellfish and crabs, that it found on the shoreline. No one knows for sure, but the dodo probably dined on the fruits, nuts and seeds that it pilfered from the forest floor. The dodo became extinct around 1693, less than 100 years after it was discovered. They destroyed the dodos’ nests and predated their eggs and chicks. Rats, goats, pigs, deer and macaques competed with the dodos for resources. Perfectly placed as a stopover for their fleets as they criss-crossed the Indian Ocean, the Dutch visited Mauritius many times before setting up a permanent base there in the 1630s.Īlong the way, they trashed the dodo’s natural habitat by felling forests to make way for sugar plantations, and flooded the island with non-native species. The cries of one captive dodo, would attract more, which came running from the forest, and so it went on. Spotting a potential meal, the sailors found they could walk right up to the dodos on the beach, and then club them to death. The dodo had evolved in an environment bereft of natural predators, so it had no fear of the newcomers. Naivety… When the first seafarers set foot on the island, they were exhausted and hungry. Hot on the heels of efforts to resurrect both the woolly mammoth and the thylacine, American biotech company, Colossal Biosciences, has announced plans to de-extinct the dodo.īut why exactly did they go extinct in the first place? What did dodos eat? And, dare we ask, what did they taste like? You can find all answers below. The dodo was exquisitely adapted to its island habitat, and could still be alive now, were it not for the actions of our own species, which drove it to extinction. Much maligned and misunderstood, in popular culture it somehow morphed into a comical caricature that was destined to die out because it was too stupid to survive. The dodo was a large, flightless pigeon, endemic to the island of Mauritius, just over 1,130 kilometres east of Madagascar, off the south-eastern coast of Africa. The surprising science of dodos: Everything you need to know, from extinction cause to its 'repulsive' taste
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