
These sailors, and others to come, quickly decimated the dodo population as an easy source of fresh meat for their voyages. The birds had no natural predators, so they were unafraid of humans. Because of this, sailors herded the birds onto their boats for fresh meat later in their voyages. Why would they fear something they’ve never seen? They had no natural predators on the islands before humans arrived. Gold said dodos exhibited no fear of humans when people reached Mauritius in the 1500s. Research Suggests Dodos Might Have Been Quite Intelligent New research suggests that the dodo, an extinct bird whose name has entered popular culture as a symbol of stupidity, was actually fairly smart. Four years later, the Dutch captain, Willem van Westsanen, used the word ‘Dodo’ for the first time. He called the bird ‘walgvogel’, meaning disgusting bird because he disliked the taste of the meat. Why is the dodo bird called the dodo bird?ĭutch admiral Wybrand van Warwijck discovered the island and the bird in 1598 during an expedition to Indonesia. Until recently, the last confirmed dodo sighting on its home island of Mauritius was made in 1662, but a 2003 estimate by David Roberts and Andrew Solow placed the extinction of the bird around 1690.


We can’t state an exact date but it seems that the dodo only died-off at the end of 17th century.

The rest of the body then adapted to compensate for the flightlessness. With no known predators, the dodo gradually became bigger in size and lost its ability to fly. Most of the dodo’s unusual characteristics can be attributed to its isolation. Since then it has become extinct Where is dodo bird now?ĭodo, (Raphus cucullatus), extinct flightless bird of Mauritius (an island of the Indian Ocean), one of the three species that constituted the family Raphidae, usually placed with pigeons in the order Columbiformes but sometimes separated as an order (Raphiformes). The dodo is a bird that lived in the Mauritius region and was last spotted 350 years back, in 1662. The dodo’s closest genetic relative was the also-extinct Rodrigues solitaire. The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island of Mauritius, which is east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Fast forward to 2022, there is some good news about the extinct bird. Are dodo birds still alive in 2022?Įven though the rareness of the dodo was reported already in the 17th century, its extinction was not recognised until the 19th century, partly because of religious reasons. Was the dodo friendly?ĭodos were recorded as being naturally curious, friendly birds. The dodo achieved widespread recognition from its role in the story of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and it has since become a fixture in popular culture, often as a symbol of extinction and obsolescence. Since then it has become extinct Why is the dodo so famous? Did dodo birds live during the ice age?.Why is the dodo bird called the dodo bird?.
