Dodo birds are flightless birds that formerly inhabited the island of Mauritious in the Indian Ocean. Their closest relatives were pigeons and doves. Their closest living relative is the Nicobar pigeon. They grow up to 3 feet on average and typically weighed around 40 pounds.
They mainly live in the woods on the coastal areas. They dieted on nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. It is believed that they also ate crabs and shellfish. They swallow gizzard stones to aid in its digestion. Due to a lack of predators, they became flightless and nested on the ground and layed a clutch of a single egg. In 1505, the Portuguese first step foot on the island and quickly became a stop over for ships involved in the spice trade. Like many animals that evolved in isolation, they became fearless of humans and were quite curious so a large number of them were food for hungry sailors. Introduced animals like ship rats, dogs, cats, pigs, and crab eating macaques wreck havoc on the island eating their eggs and hatchlings and were rival competitors for food sources. Within 100 years of arrival, the dodo birds become extremely rare. The last dodo bird died in 1681. Their extinction was not known until the 19th century when extinction was not widely believed for religious reasons and that scientists doubt the animal even exist until proven by Georges Cuvier, a naturalist. |
The Nicobar pigeon is the closest living relative of the dodo bird
A dried head and foot from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History
|
OTHER ANIMALS EXTINCT IN MAURTIUS
Many other animals went extinct when the dense forests were cleared and converted to sugar and tea plantations or have been hunted to extinction.