By Franz Lidz
The dodo was a non-flying bird comparable in size to a male turkey, characterized by its long, hooked beak and the quirky appeal similar to that of an emperor penguin. Its ancestral lineage can be traced back over 25 million years, but by 1662, it had disappeared from Mauritius, its sole habitat, due to human actions.
Since then, the dodo has become ingrained in cultural consciousness as a symbol of incompetence, often viewed as an evolutionary jester — a reputation that was bolstered by its featured role in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” in 1865. In 1941, humor writer Will Cuppy remarked that the dodo — with its unappealing visage, awkward tail, undersized wings, and noticeable belly — appeared to have been created solely to go extinct. “You can’t look like that and survive,” he pondered. “Or can you?”
Neil Gostling, a paleobiologist from the University of Southampton in England, hears these criticisms and chuckles. “Eighty-three years later, the misconception that dodos were sluggish, overweight, ineffective balls of feathers that stumbled into their own downfall remains,” he stated. “In reality, these birds were swift, nimble, and had thrived for about 12 million years before extinction.”
Gostling contributed to a recent paper published in The Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society aimed at correcting the misconceptions. By examining 400 years of literature and studying fossil data — including the only known soft tissue sample from a dodo, housed at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History — his research team conducted the most thorough investigation to date concerning the bird’s taxonomy and evolutionary background.
The team’s findings lay the groundwork for a larger initiative aiming to illuminate the dodo’s impact on Mauritius’s ecosystem, which once boasted a virtually uninterrupted landscape of ebony and bamboo forests. Julian Hume, an avian paleontologist from the Natural History Museum in London who co-authored the study, remarked, “Few creatures have been extensively documented yet remain so poorly comprehended.”
The dodo marked the first human-induced extinction recorded in real time, vanishing a hundred years before the formalization of scientific species nomenclature, as Gostling noted: “Our goal was to unveil fresh insights into its biology, behavior, and the factors contributing to its extinction.”
Dumb as a dodo?
In reevaluating the dodo, researchers also aimed to clarify the narrative surrounding its nearest relative, the Rodrigues solitaire. This flightless, goose-like bird was native to the remote island of Rodrigues, located 350 miles east of Mauritius, and disappeared around 1750 following human colonization.
The new research reaffirmed that both the dodo and solitaire were members of the dove family, known for their remarkable intelligence — a trait that contradicts the belief that the dodo went extinct due to its perceived lack of survival skills. The researchers concluded there is only one species each of the dodo (Raphus cucullatus) and solitaire (Pezophaps solitaria). A new family classification named Raphina subtribus nova was established to group these two species.
Leon Claessens, a paleontologist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, who is not affiliated with the study, remarked that the dodo has been frequently named, classified, and described — perhaps excessively so. “The authors of the new paper are making a courageous attempt to navigate the complicated naming issues surrounding the dodo and the solitaire,” he stated.
Genetic analyses indicate that these two species diverged from a common ancestor in Southeast Asia about 25 million years ago and branched off roughly 12 million years back into what later became the dodo and the solitaire. Hume explained that the ancestral species was capable of flight and island-hopped through the emerging Mascarene Plateau, an underwater archipelago stretching approximately 1,200 miles from the Seychelles to Réunion. The dodo evolved on Mauritius, which formed from volcanic activity around 8 million years ago, while the solitaire emerged on Rodrigues, which arose approximately 6.5 million years later.
Both species were well-suited to their unique environments. The dodo boasted a large bill with a hooked end, which seemed to serve as its sole means of protection. (One sailor from the 17th century referred to the dodo’s beak as its “war weapon.”) Similarly, the club-like bone formations at the end of each solitaire wing were likely used in disputes with other solitaires. With a lack of mammalian predators, the dodo and solitaire, both fruit-eaters, gradually diminished their flight and adopted a more terrestrial lifestyle. Their size increased significantly due to the abundant resources in their subtropical surroundings, ultimately leading to their loss of flight capabilities.
The consensus among researchers is that the average adult male dodo reached a height of 2 1/2 feet and weighed approximately 32 pounds, while the typical female weighed around 23 pounds. In contrast, an average male solitaire would weigh a substantial 60 pounds. Both birds experienced seasonal variations, becoming chubby for certain months and slimmer at other times of the year. “This likely offered them a survival edge during cyclone seasons from November to March,” Hume noted.
The term “dodo” has several potential origins. It may have originated from Portuguese sailors who visited Mauritius in 1507 and called the bird “doudo,” signifying “fool” or “crazy.” Alternatively, Dutch sailors who colonized the island in 1598 might have named it “dodaersen,” meaning “fat behind,” due to its ample rear. Another possibility is that “dodo” imitated the sound of the bird’s call, which may have resembled the two-note coo made by male band-tailed pigeons to attract partners.
Hume suggested that the “dumb-as-a-dodo” stereotype likely stemmed from the bird’s docile nature, as it would remain motionless when approached by famished sailors, who would then strike it down and prepare it for dinner. Dutch navigators documented slaughters of up to 50 dodos in a single day.
For the sailors who arrived on the island, the favored game included parrots and pigeons. Dodos proved to be an acquired taste. “Greasy stomachs may crave them, but to the discerning, they are unappetizing and lacking in nutrition,” noted Thomas Herbert, an English writer, in a travelogue from 1634.
Decline and fall
The majority of dodo skeletons are made up of parts from multiple individuals. Only one specimen — a head with soft tissue and feathers — is known to exist. The current study relied significantly on a collection of male and female solitaire bones housed at the Natural History Museum in London, as well as the most complete skeleton of an individual dodo, which consists of nearly all its original bones except for a few toe fragments, displayed at the Natural History Museum in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius.
“These provided vital information about body proportions, assisting in the interpretation of mass, size, and sexual differences,” Hume stated. Bone evidence indicated that the dodo possessed powerful tendons similar to those found in climbing and running birds today, effectively countering its sluggish reputation.
Regrettably, those strong tendons were ineffective against arriving Homo sapiens, who devastated the dodo’s untouched environment. The newcomers also brought in both domestic and wild species — including cats, dogs, pigs, monkeys, and rats — that hunted the dodos, contended with them for fruit, and consumed their eggs that were laid on the ground. The dodo’s decline worsened as the Dutch started to clear the forests.
“Most people believe they are immune to extinction,” Cuppy reflected. “The dodo believed that too.”
