Take pity on the poor dodo bird

There it was, fat, dumb and happy, on the island of Mauritius, east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. It had no natural predators and food was plentiful. What could go wrong?

What could go wrong was the appearance of Dutch sailors who discovered the island and found to their delight that dodoes had no fear of them. The birds were flightless, with little stubby wings, and actually approached the sailors as a new curiosity.

The sailors killed the dodoes and ate them. They remarked that the bird’s stomach was especially delicious. The sailors loaded up on dodo meat as they traveled around Africa and the tasty bird was well on its way to extinction.

A few live specimens were shipped off to England and some were displayed in private zoos and aviaries.

Weighing from 30 to 50 pounds, this was a big bird and was in the same family as pigeons and doves. Its fate was similar to the passenger pigeon, which was also hunted to extinction. In the case of the dodo, the introduction of rats, pigs, dogs and other domestic animals played havoc with this ground-nesting bird.

By 1681, the dodo was extinct. A few moth-eaten specimens were left in European museums. Most famously, the Oxford dodo became so badly decomposed, much of it had to be burned. All that remained was the head and one leg.

It was that remnant that inspired Lewis Carroll to include the dodo in his classic “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”