Dodo

Description about Dodo Bird:

The Dodo Bird – also known as Raphus cucullatus – is an extinct and flightless bird that was endemic to the Island of Mauritius. It was a bird that went extinct over 300 years ago but is still one of the first things most people think about when they think about extinctions that were caused by human beings. It is also a bird that was given a bad reputation and was eventually labeled as fat, lazy and dumb – although this might not necessarily be the case.

The history of the Dodo Bird can be traced all the way back to the Pleistocene Epoch – about 2.6 million to 12,000 years ago. This is when a flock of pigeons navigated off course and ended up on a little island that is located in the Indian Ocean – just east of Madagascar. In this new environment, these pigeons not only survived but prospered. And over the next few thousand years, they began to evolve until they eventually became the Dodo Bird.

Description:

As no complete dodo specimens exist, its external appearance, such as plumage and colouration, is hard to determine. Illustrations and written accounts of encounters with the dodo between its discovery and its extinction (1598–1662) are the primary evidence for its external appearance. According to most representations, the dodo had greyish or brownish plumage, with lighter primary feathers and a tuft of curly light feathers high on its rear end. The head was grey and naked, the beak green, black and yellow, and the legs were stout and yellowish, with black claws. A study of the few remaining feathers on the Oxford specimen head showed that they were pennaceous rather than plumaceous (downy) and most similar to those of other pigeons.

                                Subfossil remains and remnants of the birds that were brought to Europe in the 17th century show that dodos were very large birds, up to 1 m (3 ft 3 in) tall. The bird was sexually dimorphic; males were larger and had proportionally longer beaks. Weight estimates have varied from study to study. In 1993, Bradley C. Livezey proposed that males would have weighed 21 kilograms (46 lb) and females 17 kilograms (37 lb). Also in 1993, Andrew C. Kitchener attributed a high contemporary weight estimate and the roundness of dodos depicted in Europe to these birds having been overfed in captivity; weights in the wild were estimated to have been in the range of 10.6–17.5 kg (23–39 lb), and fattened birds could have weighed 21.7–27.8 kg (48–61 lb). A 2011 estimate by Angst and colleagues gave an average weight as low as 10.2 kg (22 lb). This has also been questioned, and there is still controversy over weight estimates. A 2016 study estimated the weight at 10.6 to 14.3 kg (23 to 32 lb), based on CT scans of composite skeletons. It has also been suggested that the weight depended on the season, and that individuals were fat during cool seasons, but less so during hot.

                              The skull of the dodo differed much from those of other pigeons, especially in being more robust, the bill having a hooked tip, and in having a short cranium compared to the jaws. The upper bill was nearly twice as long as the cranium, which was short compared to those of its closest pigeon relatives. The openings of the bony nostrils were elongated along the length of the beak, and they contained no bony septum. The cranium (excluding the beak) was wider than it was long, and the frontal bone formed a dome-shape, with the highest point above the hind part of the eye sockets. The skull sloped downwards at the back. The eye sockets occupied much of the hind part of the skull. The sclerotic rings inside the eye were formed by eleven ossicles (small bones), similar to the amount in other pigeons. The mandible was slightly curved, and each half had a single fenestra (opening), as in other pigeons.

Diet:

In addition to fallen fruits, the dodo probably subsisted on nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. It has also been suggested that the dodo might have eaten crabs and shellfish, like their relatives the crowned pigeons. Its feeding habits must have been versatile, since captive specimens were probably given a wide range of food on the long sea journeys. Oudemans suggested that as Mauritius has marked dry and wet seasons, the dodo probably fattened itself on ripe fruits at the end of the wet season to survive the dry season, when food was scarce; contemporary reports describe the bird's "greedy" appetite. France Staub suggested that they mainly fed on palm fruits, and he attempted to correlate the fat-cycle of the dodo with the fruiting regime of the palms.

                               Skeletal elements of the upper jaw appear to have been rhynchokinetic (movable in relation to each other), which must have affected its feeding behaviour. In extant birds, such as frugivorous (fruit-eating) pigeons, kinetic premaxille help with consuming large food items. The beak also appears to have been able to withstand high force loads, which indicates a diet of hard food. In 2016, the first 3D endocast was made from the brain of the dodo; examination found that though the brain was similar to that of other pigeons in most respects, the dodo had a comparatively large olfactory bulb. This gave the dodo a good sense of smell, which may have aided in locating fruit and small prey.

Relationship with humans:

Mauritius had previously been visited by Arab vessels in the Middle Ages and Portuguese ships between 1507 and 1513, but was settled by neither. No records of dodos by these are known, although the Portuguese name for Mauritius, "Cerne (swan) Island", may have been a reference to dodos. The Dutch Empire acquired Mauritius in 1598, renaming it after Maurice of Nassau, and it was used for the provisioning of trade vessels of the Dutch East India Company henceforward. The earliest known accounts of the dodo were provided by Dutch travelers during the Second Dutch Expedition to Indonesia, led by admiral Jacob van Neck in 1598. 

                            They appear in reports published in 1601, which also contain the first published illustration of the bird. Since the first sailors to visit Mauritius had been at sea for a long time, their interest in these large birds was mainly culinary. The 1602 journal by Willem Van West-Zanen of the ship Bruin-Vis mentions that 24–25 dodos were hunted for food, which were so large that two could scarcely be consumed at mealtime, their remains being preserved by salting.

Dodo Video:

Dodo Basic Information:

Kingdom: Animaila.

Phylum: Chordata.

Class: Aves.

Order: Columbiformes.

Family: Columbidae.

Subfamily: Raphinae.

Genus: Rapus.

Species: R. cucullatus.

Binomial Name: Raphus cucullatus.

Mass: 13-23 kg.

Extinction status: Extinct.