WASHINGTON — The dodo bird isn't coming back anytime soon. Nor is the woolly mammoth. But a company working on technologies to bring back extinct species has attracted more investors, while other scientists are skeptical such feats are possible or a good idea.
Its last confirmed sighting was in 1662, although an escaped slave claimed to have seen the bird as recently as 1674. In fact, it is estimated by using a Weibull distribution method that the dodo may have persisted until 1690, almost 30 years after its presumed extinction date.
As natives of an island with no predators the ancestors of the dodo no longer needed flight as an adaptation to escape. Flying is energetically costly, so over time it was not favoured by natural selection, and flightlessness was passed on to subsequent generations.
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.
Some were killed by sailors looking for a change in diet, others by the rats, cats, pigs and monkeys the sailors brought with them. Or dodos may have gone hungry as the invaders cleared forests rich in fruits. Their extinction is likely due to complex phenomena of changing ecosystem and human behavior.
The birds had no natural predators, so they were unafraid of humans. These sailors, and others to come, quickly decimated the dodo population as an easy source of fresh meat for their voyages. As humans settled on the island, loss of habitat further threatened the birds.
Dodo Birds
Because dodos were birds, they were technically descendants of dinosaurs, like all birds. One of the closest living relatives of dodo birds today is Southeast Asian Nicobar pigeons.
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.
The kiwi is one of New Zealand's many flightless birds. They didn't need to fly because there weren't any land mammal predators before man arrived to New Zealand 1000 years ago.
The birds were first seen by Portuguese sailors about 1507 and were exterminated by humans and their introduced animals. The dodo was extinct by 1681, the Réunion solitaire by 1746, and the Rodrigues solitaire by about 1790.
In around 1693, its habitat destroyed and its eggs prey to new predators, the last surviving dodo died somewhere in the increasingly sparse forests of Mauritius.
The scientific name for the Dodo is Raphus cucullatus. What is the lifespan of a Dodo? Dodos can live for 10 to 30 years.
It is therefore entirely possible for prehistoric genetic material to survive for up to one million years. But the big dinosaurs departed this life some 66 million years ago. So the prospect of finding enough viable DNA material in what remains of them today is therefore vanishingly remote.
Less than a century after the first humans set foot on the island, the dodo had left the stage. Despite the popular belief that dodo meat was inedible because of its revolting taste, dodos were eaten by these early settlers, and even considered to be a delicacy by some.
1. Sabre-toothed Cat. Often called Sabre-toothed Tigers or Sabre-toothed Lions, they existed 55 million to 11,700 years ago. Sabre-tooth Cats were carnivores named for the elongated bladelike canine teeth, which in some species were up to 50cm long.
Found by Dutch soldiers around 1600 on an island in the Indian Ocean, the Dodo became extinct less than 80 years later because of deforestation, hunting, and destruction of their nests by animals brought to the island by the Dutch. The Dodo may not always have been flightless.
It's commonly believed that the dodo went extinct because Dutch sailors ate the beast to extinction after finding that the bird was incredibly easy to catch due to the fact it had no fear of humans, (why it didn't fear the creature many times its size is a mystery for another day).
1. Chinese Paddlefish. Overfishing played a large role in the demise of this fish. The Chinese paddlefish, also known as the “Giant Chinese Sturgeon,” was declared extinct in 2022.
Among these extinct animals are the West African black rhinoceros, the baiji white dolphin, the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, and Stellers sea cow. There are six main reasons why species now become extinct: Habitat loss.
Stanley Temple hypothesized that the dodo, which became extinct in the 17th century, ate tambalacoque fruits, and only by passing through the digestive tract of the dodo could the seeds germinate.
Like many of today's birds, dodos also swallowed stones, to help with digestion. These 'gastroliths' were retained in the bird's muscular gizzard, where they helped to grind up fibrous material.