Dodo or dodo bird: description and interesting facts. Dodo or dodo bird: description and interesting facts Report on the reasons for the extinction of dodo bird species

The dodo was discovered on the islands east of Madagascar, today called the Mascarene Archipelago. Three fairly large islands that form this archipelago stretch along the 20th parallel south of the equator. Now they are called Reunion, Mauritius and Rodrigues.

The names of the discoverers of these territories remain unknown. It is quite obvious that Arab merchant ships sailed here, but did not pay much attention to their discovery, since the islands were uninhabited, and it is extremely difficult to trade on uninhabited islands. The European discoverers were the Portuguese, although, surprisingly, it was only from the second call that the Portuguese discoverer gave the islands his name.

This man was Diogo Fernandes Pereira, who sailed in these waters in 1507. On February 9, he discovered an island located 400 miles east of Madagascar and named it Santa Apollonia. It must be modern Reunion. Soon Pereira's ship "Serne" stumbled upon the current Mauritius. The sailors landed on the shore and named the island after their ship - Ilha do Cerne.

Pereira moved towards India, and in the same year, a little later, Rodriguez discovered. At first, the island was named Domingo Freese, but also Diego Rodriguez. The Dutch apparently found the name difficult to pronounce, and spoke of an island called DiegoRay, which was later gallicized to become the Dygarroys; however, the French themselves called the island Il Marianne.

Six years later, the second "discoverer", Pedro Mascarenhas, arrived, he visited only Mauritius and Réunion. On this occasion, Mauritius was not renamed, but Sant Apollonia (Reunion) was named Mascarenhas or Mascaragne, and to this day the islands are called Mascarene (http://www.zooeco.com/strany/str-africa-10.html).

The Portuguese discovered Mauritius, but did not settle on it. However, in 1598 the Dutch landed there and claimed the island as their own (Leopold, 2000). The Mascarene Islands were a convenient transit station on the way to India, and soon crowds of adventurers flooded them (Akimushkin, 1969).

In 1598, after the arrival of a squadron of 8 ships to Mauritius, the Dutch admiral Jacob van Nek began to compile a list and description of all living things that were found on the island. After the admiral's notes were translated into other languages, the scientific world learned about an unusual, strange and even bizarre flightless bird, which is known throughout the world as a dodo, although scientists most often call it a dodo (Bobrovsky, 2003).

Let's find out more about it...

Rice. Reconstruction of the appearance of the dodo (http://www.google.ru/imghp?hl=ru)

It was said that dodos gave the impression of being almost tame, although it was not possible to keep them in captivity. “... They trustingly approach a person, but they can’t be tamed in any way: as soon as they fall into captivity, they begin to stubbornly refuse any food until they die.”

A quiet life for the dodos ended as soon as a person began to actively interfere in the life of the island nature.

Ship crews replenished food supplies on the islands, for this purpose exterminating all life in the forests of the archipelago. The sailors ate all the huge turtles, and then set to work on the clumsy birds.
On small oceanic islands, where there are no land predators, dodos gradually, from generation to generation, lost the ability to fly. The cooks of the Dutch courts did not know whether this easily accessible bird with tough meat could be eaten. But very quickly, hungry sailors realized that the dodo is edible and it is very, very profitable to get it. Defenseless birds, heavily waddling from side to side and waving miserable "stumps" of wings, unsuccessfully tried to escape from people by flight. Only three birds were enough to feed the ship's crew. A few dozen salted dodos were enough for a whole voyage. They got used to it so much that the holds of ships were filled to the top with living and dead dodos, and the sailors of passing ships and caravels competed for the sake of sporting interest in who would kill these clumsy birds more. From that moment on, the Mauritian dodo had less than 50 years to live in nature (Green, 2000; Akimushkin, 1969; Bobrovsky, 2003; http://erudity.ru/t215_20.html).

The flightless dodos were completely helpless in the face of new enemies, and their numbers began to dwindle rapidly. They soon disappeared altogether. All together, people and animals, by the end of the 18th century, they exterminated all dodos (Akimushkin, 1969; Leopold, 2000).

On the three islands of the Mascarene archipelago - Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues - lived, apparently, three different types of dodos.

In 1693, for the first time, the dodo was not included in the list of animals of Mauritius, so by this time, it can be considered that it had already disappeared completely.

The Rodrigues dodo, or hermit, was last seen in 1761. As in other cases, not a single stuffed animal of it remained, and for a long time scientists did not have a single bone of it. It is time to ask: was this dodo? Moreover, François Lega, the author of the most detailed description of the Rodrigues dodo, was sometimes called a 100% liar, and some scientists considered his book “The Journey and Adventures of Francois Lega and his Companions…” to be a collection of retellings of other people's fictions (Akimushkin, 1995; http://www. bestreferat.ru/referat-6576.html).

Later, the Réunion dodo was exterminated. It was first mentioned in 1613 by the English captain Castleton, who landed on Reunion with his pets. Then the Dutchman Bontekoevan Gorn, who spent 21 days on this island in 1618, mentioned this bird, calling it "hohlohvostok". The last traveler who saw and described this species was the Frenchman Bory-de-Saint-Vincennes, who visited Reunion in 1801. Domestic animals and humans also became the reason for the disappearance of this species. Not a single skeleton and not a single stuffed white dodo remained (Bobrovsky, 2003).

The table shows the anthropogenic rate of destruction of dodos (Table 1).

Table 1

So, that the very first mention of this species was made in 1598, and the most recent - in 1801. Thus, we can conclude that the species disappeared in about 200 years.

When, at the end of the 18th century, naturalists rushed in the footsteps of the dodos, and their search led them to the island of Mauritius, everyone to whom they turned for advice here only shook their heads doubtfully. “No, sir, we don’t have such birds and never have,” said both shepherds and peasants.

Photo 3.

1.3. Dodo in Europe

Sailors tried many times to bring dodos to Europe in order to surprise Europeans with an outlandish bird. But, if the gray Mauritian dodo sometimes managed to be brought alive to the northern latitudes, then with its white Reunion counterpart it did not work out. Almost all birds died during the journey. As an unknown French priest who visited the island of Mauritius wrote in 1668: “Each of us wanted to take two birds with us to send them to France and there convey to His Majesty; but on the ship the birds were dying, probably from boredom, refusing to eat and drink” (quoted by V.A. Krasilnikov, 2001).

Legend has it that two dodos from Reunion Island, taken by ship to Europe, really shed tears when they parted with their native island (Bobrovsky, 2003).
Although sometimes this idea was still successful, and, according to the Japanese ecologist Dr. Masaui Hachisuka, who studied in detail the history of the amazing flightless bird, a total of 12 individuals of this flightless bird were brought to Europe from Mauritius. 9 dodos were brought to Holland, 2 to England and 1 to Italy (Bobrovsky, 2003).

There is also a random mention that one of the birds was taken to Japan, but, despite numerous attempts by Japanese scientists, it was not possible to find a mention of this in Japanese chronicles and books (http://www.gumer.info/bibliotek_Buks /Science/lei/01.php).

In 1599, Admiral Jacob van Neck brought the first living dodo to Europe. In the homeland of the admiral in Holland, a strange bird made a noisy commotion. She could not be surprised.

Artists were especially attracted by her downright grotesque appearance. And Pieter-Holstein, and Hufnagel, and Franz Franken, and other famous painters were carried away by "drontopis". At that time, they say, more than fourteen portraits were painted from a captive dodo. It is interesting that a color image of a dodo (one of these portraits) was found only in 1955 by Professor Ivanov at the Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) Institute of Oriental Studies!

Another living dodo came to Europe half a century later, in 1638. A funny story happened with this bird, or rather, with its stuffed animal. The dodo was brought to London and there, for money, they showed it to everyone who wanted to look at it. And when the bird died, they took off its skin and stuffed it with straw. From a private collection, the stuffed animal ended up in one of the Oxford museums. For a century it vegetated there in a dusty corner. And in the winter of 1755, the curator of the museum decided to make a general inventory of the exhibits. For a long time he stared in bewilderment at the stuffed animal of a surreal bird with a ridiculous inscription on the label: “Ark” (ark?). And then he ordered to throw it in the garbage heap.

Fortunately, a more educated person happened to pass by that pile. Marveling at his unexpected luck, he pulled out of the garbage dump the hook-nosed head of the dodo and the clumsy paw - all that was left of him - and hurried with his priceless finds to the dealer in curiosities. The rescued paw and the head were later accepted into the museum again, this time with great honors. These are the only relics in the world left from a single stuffed dragon-like “pigeon,” says Willy Ley, one of the experts on the sad history of dodos. But Dr. James Greenway of Cambridge, in an excellent monograph on extinct birds, claims that the British Museum has another leg, and in Copenhagen a head, which undoubtedly belonged to a once-living dodo from Mauritius (Akimushkin, 1969).

Rice. Early dodo drawings (left), dodo reconstruction (right) (http://www.google.ru/imghp?hl=ru)

The traditional image of the dodo is that of a fat, clumsy dove, but this view has been challenged in recent times. Scientists have proven that old European drawings show overfed birds in captivity. The artist Maestro Mansour painted dodos on the native islands of the Indian Ocean (Fig. 4.) and depicted the birds as slimmer. His drawings were studied by Professor Ivanov and proved that these drawings are the most accurate. Two "living" specimens were brought to the Indian Ocean islands in the 1600s, and the painted specimens matched the description. As noted in Mauritius, the dodo fed on ripe fruits at the end of the rainy season to survive in the dry season when food is scarce. There were no problems with food in captivity and the birds became overfed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo).

Photo 4.

1.4. Cultural and historical significance of the dodo

Dodo in astronomy

Dodos became famous even in astronomy. In honor of the dodo from Rodriguez, one constellation in the sky was named. In June 1761, the French astronomer Pingres spent some time on Rodrigues, observing Venus against the background of the solar disk (she was crossing it just then). Five years later, his colleague Le Monnier, in order to preserve the memory of his friend’s stay on Rodrigues for centuries and in honor of the amazing bird that lived on this island, named the new group of stars discovered by him between Draco and Scorpio the constellation of the Hermit. Wanting to mark him on the map, according to the customs of those times, with a symbolic figure, Le Monnier turned to Brisson's Ornithology, then popular in France, for information. He did not know that Brisson did not include dodos in his book, and, seeing in the list of birds the name solitaria, that is, "hermit", conscientiously redrawn the animal named so. And he mixed everything up, of course: instead of the impressive dodo, the new constellation on the map was crowned with its little representative figure by the blue stone thrush - Monticolasolitaria (he lives now in the south of Europe, and in our country - in Transcaucasia, Central Asia and southern Primorye) (Akimushkin, 1969 .).

When compiling an essay on the ecology of the species, the method of autecological description by V. D. Ilyichev (1982) was used with additions of individual elements of a similar technique by G. A. Novikov (1949).

Photo 5.

2.1. Ideas about the taxonomy of the dodo and their evolution

By the beginning of the 19th century, knowledge about the systematic position of dodos was very contradictory. At first, according to rumors and the first sketches, dodos were mistaken for pygmy ostrich birds, since the loss of flight and even a strong reduction in the wing skeleton is a common occurrence in this group of birds. So at first thought Carl Linnaeus, who in his 10th edition of The System of Nature in 1758 classified the dodo in the genus of ostriches. There were also more bizarre opinions. Some naturalists considered the dodo a kind of wingless swan, others attributed the dodo to albatrosses, and even to waders and plovers. In the 30s of the 19th century, the dodo was even classified as a vulture because of its bare head and curved beak. This extravagant point of view was supported by Richard Owen himself - the undisputed authority of that time, an English morphologist and paleontologist, to whom we owe the word "dinosaur". And yet, over time, the opinion of scientists leaned in favor of the fact that dodos are some kind of chicken birds that have lost their ability to fly, as is often found on the islands.

The fact that scientists now consider the proximity of the dodo to pigeons was first expressed by studying the skull of the dodo, the Danish naturalist J. Reinhard. But, unfortunately, he soon died, his point of view was supported by the English scientist H. Strickland, who carefully studied all the available collection materials, including drawings. Strickland called the dodo "a colossal, short-winged, frugivorous pigeon." This view became widely accepted in science when hook-billed pigeons (Didunculus strigirostris) first entered European collections from the oceanic islands of Western Samoa. The hook-billed dove is small, the size of an ordinary sizar, but also has a remarkable beak, ending in a sharp hook and a curved mandible; along its edge are teeth. The beak of this hermit from the island of Samoa immediately allows you to "recognize" in him a kind of bizarre dodo beak. And what is remarkable, according to the reports of the first navigators, toothed pigeons also nested on the ground and laid only one egg. On many islands, where pigs, cats and rats appeared along with humans, toothed pigeons began to quickly disappear, but on two islands - Upolu and Savaii, they switched to nesting in trees, which saved them. Unfortunately, the dodos could not fly up to the trees (Bobrovsky, 2003).

Photo 6.

All modern pigeons, and there are 285 known species, fly well. In the order of pigeon-like (Golumbiformes), in addition to the families Pigeon and Dodo, there is also the family Ryabkovye (Pteroelidae). But they (16 species in the world) fly beautifully. In addition, in addition to the dodo and its relatives, the discoverers of Mauritius and other Mascarene Islands discovered there many species of real ones, i.e. flying pigeons. Why didn't they lose their wings? It turns out that there is not a single species of pigeon that, once on a deserted (without predators) island, would become flightless.

In 1959, at the International Zoological Congress in London, the German naturalist Luttschwager for the first time put forward a completely new hypothesis on the origin and relationship of dodos. In the structure of the head of dodos and pigeons, he found many differences. Then other authors joined him, especially after comparing the bones and skeletons from Mauritius and Rodrigues. In his book Dodos (1961), Lüttschwager criticized the "pigeon" hypothesis of the origin of these giant birds. In the structure of the hip joints, breast bones and paws of dodos, he found much in common not with pigeons, but with corncrakes belonging to the family of shepherd birds. Corncrakes do not fly well and, in case of danger, try not to take off, but to run away. Moreover, the corncrakes living on isolated islands are losing the ability to fly, and many flightless shepherds like them (Mauritian shepherd, Mascarene coot, some chaps and moorhens - only 15 species) have died out like dodos (http://www.mybirds.ru/forums /lofiversion/index.php/t58317.html).

In 2002, an analysis of the cytochrome b and 12S rRNA gene sequences was carried out, on the basis of which it was determined that the living maned pigeon (Fig.) is the closest relative of dodos (http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodos).

According to modern classification, the dodo family is included in the order pigeon-like.

• Kingdom: Animals
• Type: Chordates
• Subtype: Vertebrates
• Class: Birds
• Subclass: New palatine
• Squad: Pigeons - birds with a dense massive body; legs and neck are short; the wings are long and sharp, adapted for rapid flight. The plumage is dense, dense; feathers with well developed down part. The beak is rather short, the nostrils are covered from above with leathery caps. The food is almost exclusively vegetable and, first of all, seeds, less often fruits and berries. All pigeons have a well-developed goiter, which serves both to accumulate food and to soften it; in addition, pigeons feed the chicks with "milk" produced in the goiter.
• Family: Dodo (Raphidae) included 3 species:
  - Mauritian dodo. Dodo, or Mauritian dodo, he is also a gray dodo. This species lived on the island of Mauritius - the largest island of the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. This species was first described by Carl Linnaeus himself.
  - Reunion dodo. In the tropical forests of Reunion Island, another species lived - white, or Bourbon, dodo (Raphusborbonicus), really almost white, slightly smaller than dodo. Some experts doubt the existence of this species, since it is known only from descriptions and drawings.
  - Rodrigues dodo. The third representative of the family, the hermit dodo (Pezophapssolitarius), lived on the island of Rodrigues. Back in 1730, the hermit dodo was quite common, but by the end of the 18th century, this species also ceased to exist. There is nothing left of it - there are no skins or eggs of this bird in museums (http://www.ecosystema.ru/07referats/01/dodo.htm).

Enemies and limiting factors

On the islands where the dodo lived, there were no large mammals that would hunt it. This trusting, extremely peaceful creature has completely lost the ability to recognize enemies. The dodo's only defense was its beak. In 1607, Admiral Vergouvin visited Mauritius, who was the first to note that dodos, it turns out, can “bite very painfully” (Durrell, 2002; http://www.bestreferat.ru/referat-6576.html).

After the discovery of the islands, people began to actively exterminate clumsy birds. In addition, pigs were brought to the islands, which crushed the eggs of dodos, goats, which ate the bushes where the dodos built their nests; dogs and cats destroyed old and young birds, and pigs and rats devoured chicks (Leopold, 2000).

Photo 8.

Ecological consequences of the extinction of the species

An interesting fact about dodos was discovered in 1973, when scientists drew attention to the fact that on the island of Mauritius there are old trees - calvariimetor, which almost never renew. Trees of this species in the past were also not uncommon on the island, and now no more than a dozen and a half calvaria specimens grow on its entire area of ​​​​2045 square kilometers. It turned out that their age exceeds 300 years. The trees still produced nuts, but none of the nuts sprouted and no new trees appeared. But almost 300 years ago, in 1681, the last dodo was killed on the same island. American ecologist Stanley Temil managed to establish a connection between the extinction of the dodo and the extinction of the calvaria. He proves that these birds were an important factor in the reproduction of trees. He suggested that the nuts would not germinate until they were pecked by the dodo and passed through his intestines. The pebbles that the dodo swallowed in his stomach destroyed the hard shell of the nuts, and the calvaria sprouted. Temil suggests that evolution developed such a strong shell because the seeds of calvaria were willingly swallowed by Dodo pigeons.

To test the hypothesis, the nuts were fed to turkeys with a similar stomach, and after passing through the digestive system, new trees grew from them. With the disappearance of dodos, no other bird in Mauritius could destroy the hard shell of nuts, and these trees became endangered (Bobrovsky, 2003; http://km.ru:8080/magazin/view.asp?id=C12A7036E18E469CAA6022BE1699E434).

Material remains of the species

For a long time after the destruction of the dodo, no one could find evidence of the existence of this bird. The dodo hunters, disappointed and embarrassed, returned with nothing. But J. Clark (Fig. 11.), not believing local legends, stubbornly continued to look for forgotten capons. He climbed mountains and swamps, tore more than one camisole on thorny bushes, dug the earth, rummaged in dusty screes on river steeps and in ravines. Good luck always comes to those who persevere. And Clark was lucky: in one swamp, he dug up many massive bones of a large bird. Richard Owen (English zoologist and paleontologist) examined these bones in detail and proved that they belong to dodos.

Rice. Excavations by J. Clark on a postage stamp (http://www.google.ru/imghp?hl=ru)

At the end of the last century, the government of the island of Mauritius ordered more thorough excavations in the swamp discovered by Clark. We found many bones of dodos and even several complete skeletons that now adorn the halls with the most valuable collections of some museums in the world.

After a fire at the Oxford Museum in 1755, the last complete set of dodo bones burned down.

A team of Dutch paleontologists in 2006 discovered a part of a dodo skeleton on the island of Mauritius (Fig.). Among the remains found are part of the femur, paws, beak, spine and wings of a dodo. The bones of the vanished bird were discovered in a dried-up swamp in Mauritius. Dutch researchers continue their search and hope to find complete skeletons.

Rice. Dodo bones found by the Dutch (http://www.google.ru/imghp?hl=ru)

Dodo bones are not as rare as its eggs, although they are among the most valuable scientific finds.

A single dodo egg has survived to this day. Some zoologists regard this large, cream-colored egg as the most important exhibit for their science. It must cost hundreds of pounds more than a pale green egg of a great loon or an ivory fossil egg of the Madagascar epiornis, the largest bird of the ancient world (Fedorov, 2001).

The dodo is of considerable interest in the scientific world. This is evidenced by the fact that the prospects for the restoration of this species by genetic engineering have been actively discussed in recent years (Zeleny Mir, 2007).

2.8. View recovery prospects

A group of American biologists were able to isolate the DNA (Fig.) of a bird from the shell of a single egg.

Experiments with the isolation of paleo-DNA (that is, DNA from ancient fossils) have been conducted for a long time. But until now, researchers have used the technology of extracting hereditary material from the bones of fossil animals, in particular birds.

In 1999, British scientists embarked on a program to recreate the extinct species using the preserved genetic material. Moreover, the famous dodo bird was chosen as the first object.

It is curious that in Moscow, in the State Darwin Museum, there is one of the few dodo skeletons. Scientists know only a few skeletons (fig.) and bones of the dodo, and the specimen kept in the Darwin Museum is the only one in Russia.

Researchers at the Darwin Museum expressed serious doubts about the successful outcome of the experiment, conceived by British scientists. The arguments were like this. First, it is very unlikely that such a complex three-dimensional structure as DNA is well preserved. According to the museum staff, even from the carcasses of mammoths that have lain in the permafrost, it is not possible to isolate intact DNA - they are all “broken”. Second, DNA itself does not replicate. To start the process of its division, you need an appropriate environment - the cytoplasm and other organelles inherent in a living cell.

This is precisely the current achievement of American biologists, that they have developed a technology for isolating hereditary material (DNA) not from bones, but from eggshells. The authors of the new work found that it is in this fraction that most of the DNA is contained - it is, as it were, sealed in a matrix of calcium carbonate. Prior to this, when extracted from bones, most of the calcium was simply washed out of the source material. After all, before, as they did, they made a pomace from the remnants of bone material using special methods; put it in a saline solution and washed out everything superfluous. Then, well-preserved cells were selected and the nuclei were “knocked out” from them (recall, it is in the nuclei that DNA is contained).
The success was even greater than expected. It was possible to obtain not only nuclear DNA, but also the DNA of the so-called mitochondria - organelles that work as energy stations of the cell. Mitochondrial DNA is smaller than nuclear DNA, so it is better preserved in samples and easier to extract. However, it carries much less information about a living being. In addition, this information is transmitted to offspring only through the female line.

According to scientists, the shell is a more convenient source of DNA, not only because it is easier to extract nucleic acids from it. An additional benefit is that the shell is less "attractive" to bacteria whose DNA contaminates the DNA of the target species and makes it difficult to work with.

Nevertheless, the most intriguing question remains open: can the resulting DNA be used to recreate long-extinct animals?

There seem to be no fundamental limitations to the cloning process. The principle scheme is clear: we transplant the obtained cell nuclei into the eggs of cows, previously deprived of native nuclei (it is more convenient to work with the eggs of cows: they are large in size, the technology for their production has been established, there are banks of such cells); then a "surrogate" mother of a related species bears an embryo ... It remains only to wait. In the case of the cloned sheep Dolly, the probability of success was 0.02% (Morozov, 2010).

The dodo is an extinct bird from the pigeon family. Also, grouse and pigeons belong to this family.

Pigeon-like birds are birds with meek legs and neck, with a massive, dense body, with long and sharp wings, adapted for fast flight. Nature endowed them with thick plumage, which is covered with leathery caps from above. Birds fed exclusively on plant foods, especially seeds, berries and fruits. Almost all pigeons had a well-developed goiter, which served them not only for storing food, but also for softening it. In addition, pigeons fed their chicks with "milk", which is produced in the goiter.

The Dodo family included three species of extinct birds that lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Mascarene Islands, namely, Rodrigues, Mauritius and Réunion before they were discovered by Europeans. These were large birds, the size of a turkey and they weighed about twenty kilograms. The Dodos had a large head and a curvy body. The paws of the birds were strong and short, and the wings, on the contrary, were small. The beak is thick, hooked. The tail of the birds was short, and consisted of only a few feathers that stuck out in a bunch.

These birds did not know how to fly, they spent their lives feeding and nesting only on the ground. They fed on various fruits, seeds, leaves of plants and their buds. As a rule, in the dodo tab, there was one white egg, which was incubated not only by the female, but also by the male for seven weeks.

The Mauritius Dodo lived on the island of Mauritius, where Europeans came in 1507. The bird had another name - Dodo. The bird was gray in color and up to one meter long. Sailors caught Dodo and used it for food, but these were not the most terrible enemies of birds. Goats, the constant companions of man at that time, who were brought to the island, ate clean bushes in which birds were hiding, dogs and cats destroyed not only young individuals, but also old ones, and rats and pigs devoured eggs and chicks. As a result, already by 1690, the ridiculous, fat and defenseless Dodo dove ceased to exist. Now you can see in some museums only dried pigeon legs, a few heads and a large number of bones. This Dodo, already, as they say "posthumously" was chosen as a symbol of the state of Mauritius and began to be depicted on the coat of arms of this state.

Another species lived in the rainforests of Reunion Island. It was a Bourbon, or white Dodo, and slightly smaller than a Dodo. This species became extinct in the middle of the eighteenth century.

The third representative of the family lived on the island of Rodriguez, and he was called the Dodo Hermit. They were birds with a more graceful physique and much better developed wings compared to the Dodo. By the end of the eighteenth century, this species ceased to exist.

In a short period of time, all representatives of this unique bird family were destroyed. It would seem that there is nothing more to say, and you can put a big and bold point. But, at the end of the twentieth century, British researchers set themselves the goal of recreating the Mauritian Dodo. We hope that they will be able to decipher the preserved DNA in the mummified heads and paws, synthesize and transfer into the nucleus of the egg of the most genetically close species of pigeons.

Dodos were flightless birds the size of a goose. It is assumed that an adult bird weighed 20-25 kg (for comparison: the mass of a turkey is 12-16 kg), it reached a meter in height.

The paws of the dodo with four fingers resembled those of a turkey, the beak is very massive. Unlike penguins and ostriches, dodos could not only fly, but also swim well or run fast: there were no land predators on the islands and there was nothing to be afraid of.

As a result of centuries of evolution, the dodo and its brethren gradually lost their wings - only a few feathers remained on them, and the tail turned into a small crest.

Dodos were found in the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean. They lived in forests, kept in separate pairs. They nested on the ground, laying one large white egg.

Dodos completely died out with the advent of Europeans on the Mascarene Islands - first the Portuguese, and then the Dutch.

Dodo hunting became a source of replenishment of ship supplies, rats, pigs, cats and dogs were brought to the islands, which ate the eggs of a helpless bird.

To hunt a dodo, you just had to approach him and hit him on the head with a stick. Having previously had no natural enemies, the dodo was trusting. Perhaps that is why the sailors gave him the name "dodo" - from the common Portuguese word "doudo" ("doido" - "stupid", "crazy").

Dodo(Raphinae) is an extinct subfamily of flightless birds, formerly known as didinae. Birds of this subfamily lived in the Mascarene Islands, Mauritius and Rodrigues, but became extinct as a result of hunting by humans and predation by rats and dogs introduced by humans.

Dodo belong to the order Pigeons and have two genera, the genera Pezophaps and Raphus. The first contained the Rodrigues dodo (Pezophaps solitaria) and the second the Mauritian dodo (Raphus cucullatus). These birds reached impressive sizes due to isolation on the islands.

The closest living relative of the dodo is the maned pigeon is the dodo and the Rodrigues dodo.

The maned pigeon is the closest relative of the dodo.

The Mauritius dodo (Raphus cucullatus), or dodo, lived on the island of Mauritius; the last mention of it refers to 1681, there is a drawing by the artist R. Saverey in 1628.

One of the most famous and often copied images of the dodo, created by Roulant Severey in 1626

The Rodrigues dodo (Pezophaps solitaria), or hermit dodo, lived on the island of Rodrigues, died out after 1761, possibly survived until the beginning of the 19th century.

Mauritian dodo, or dodo(Raphus cucullatus) - an extinct species, was endemic to the island of Mauritius.

The first documented mention of the dodo appeared thanks to the Dutch navigators who arrived on the island in 1598.

With the advent of man, the bird became a victim of sailors, and the last observation in nature, widely recognized by the scientific community, was recorded in 1662.

The disappearance was not immediately noticed, and for a long time many naturalists considered the dodo a mythical creature, until in the 40s of the 19th century a study was made of the surviving remains of individuals brought to Europe at the beginning of the 17th century. At the same time, the relationship of dodos with pigeons was first indicated.

A large number of bird remains have been collected on the island of Mauritius, mainly from the area of ​​the marsh Mar aux Saunges.

The extinction of this species in less than a century since its discovery drew the attention of the scientific community to the previously unknown problem of human involvement in the extinction of animals.

Rodrigues Dodo, or hermit dodo(Pezophaps solitaria) is an extinct flightless bird of the pigeon family, endemic to the island of Rodrigues, located east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. Its closest relative was the Mauritius dodo (both species formed the subfamily of the dodo).

The size of a swan, the Rodrigues dodo had pronounced sexual dimorphism. Males were much larger than females and reached up to 90 cm in length and 28 kg in weight. Females reached up to 70 cm in length and 17 kilograms in weight. The plumage of males was gray and brown, while that of females was pale.

The Rodrigues dodo is the only extinct bird that astronomers named a constellation after. It was called Turdus Solitarius, and later - Lone Thrush.

The appearance of the dodo is known only from images and written sources of the 17th century. Since those single sketches that were copied from living specimens and have survived to this day differ from each other, the exact lifetime appearance of the bird remains unknown for certain.

Similarly, little can be said with certainty about her habits. The remains show that the Mauritian dodo was about 1 meter tall and could have weighed 10-18 kg.

The bird depicted in the paintings had a brownish-gray plumage, yellow legs, a small tuft of tail feathers and a gray, unfeathered head with a black, yellow or green beak.

The main habitat of the dodo was probably the forests in the drier, coastal regions of the island. It is believed that the Mauritian dodo lost its ability to fly due to the presence of a large number of food sources (which are believed to have included fallen fruit) and the absence of dangerous predators on the island.

Ornithologists of the first half of the 19th century attributed the dodo to small ostriches, shepherds, and albatrosses, and even considered it a kind of vulture!

So in 1835, Henri Blainville, examining a cast of the skull obtained from the Oxford Museum, concluded that the bird was related to ... kites!

In 1842, Danish zoologist Johannes Theodor Reinhart suggested that dodos were ground pigeons based on research on a skull he discovered in the royal collection in Copenhagen. Initially, this opinion was considered ridiculous by the scientist's colleagues, but in 1848 he was supported by Hugh Strickland and Alexander Melville, who published the monograph "Dodo and its relatives" (TheDodoandItsKindred).

After Melville dissected the head and paw of a specimen kept in the Museum of Natural History at Oxford University and compared them with the remains of the extinct Rodrigues dodo, scientists found that both species are closely related. Strickland established that although these birds were not identical, they had many common features in the structure of the bones of the legs, characteristic only of pigeons.

The Mauritius dodo was similar to pigeons in many anatomical ways. This species differed from other members of the family mainly in underdeveloped wings, as well as in a much larger beak relative to the rest of the skull.

During the 19th century, several species were assigned to the same genus with the dodo, including the Rodrigues hermit dodo and the Réunion dodo as Didus solitarius and Raphus solitarius, respectively.

Large bones found on Rodrigues Island (now found to be those of a male hermit dodo) led E. D. Bartlett to the existence of a larger new species, which he named Didus nazarenus (1851). Previously, it was invented by I. Gmelin (1788) for the so-called. "Nazareth bird" - partly mythical description of the dodo, which was published in 1651 by François Coche. It is now recognized as a synonym for Pezophaps solitaria. Rough sketches of a red Mauritian shepherd have also been erroneously assigned to new dodo species: Didus broeckii (Schlegel, 1848) and Didus herberti (Schlegel, 1854).

Until 1995, the so-called white, or Reunion, or Bourbon dodo (Raphus borbonicus) was considered the closest extinct relative of the dodo. Only relatively recently it was established that all his descriptions and images were misinterpreted, and the discovered remains belong to an extinct representative of the ibis family. It was eventually given the name Threskiornis solitarius.

Initially, the dodo and the hermit dodo from Rodrigues Island were assigned to different families (Raphidae and Pezophapidae, respectively), as it was believed that they appeared independently of each other. Then, over the years, they were united in the dodo family (formerly Dididae), since their exact relationship with other pigeons remained in question.

However, a DNA analysis made in 2002 confirmed the relationship of both birds and their belonging to the pigeon family. The same genetic study found that the closest modern relative of dodos is the maned pigeon.

The remains of another large, slightly smaller than the dodo and the Rodrigues dodo, the flightless pigeon Natunaornis gigoura were found on the island of Viti Levu (Fiji) and described in 2001. It is believed that he is also related to crowned pigeons.

A genetic study in 2002 showed that the separation of the "pedigrees" of the Rodrigues and Mauritian dodos occurred in the region of the border of the Paleogene and Neogene about 23 million years ago.

The Mascarene Islands (Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues) are of volcanic origin with an age of no more than 10 million years. Thus, the common ancestors of these birds must have retained the ability to fly for a long time after separation.

The absence of herbivorous mammals in Mauritius, which could compete with food, allowed dodos to reach very large sizes. At the same time, birds were not threatened by predators, which led to the loss of the ability to fly.

Apparently, the earliest documented name for the dodo is the Dutch word walghvogel, which is mentioned in the journal of Vice Admiral Wiebrand van Warwijk, who visited Mauritius during the Second Dutch Expedition to Indonesia in 1598.

The English word wallowbirdes, which can literally be translated as "tasteless birds", is a tracing-paper from the Dutch counterpart walghvogel; the word wallow is dialectal and cognate with Middle Dutch walghe meaning "tasteless", "insipid" and "nauseous".

Another report from the same expedition, written by Heindrik Dirks Yolink (perhaps the very first mention of dodos), says that the Portuguese who had previously visited Mauritius called those birds "penguins". However, they used the word fotilicaios to designate the only spectacled penguins then known, and what the Dutchman mentioned seems to be derived from the Portuguese pinion ("clipped wing"), obviously indicating the small size of those of the dodos.

The crew of the Dutch ship "Gelderland" in 1602 called them the word dronte (meaning "swollen", "bloated"). From it came the modern name used in the Scandinavian and Slavic languages ​​​​(including Russian). This crew also called them griff-eendt and kermisgans, alluding to poultry being fattened for the patronal feast of Kermesse in Amsterdam, which was held the day after the sailors anchored off the coast of Mauritius.

The origin of the word "dodo" is unclear. Some researchers elevate it to the Dutch “dodoor” (“lazy”), others to “dod-aars” meaning “fat-assed” or “bump-assed”, with which sailors probably wanted to emphasize such a feature as a tuft of feathers in the tail of a bird (Strickland also mentions its slang meaning with the Russian analogue "salaga").

The first entry of the word "dod-aars" is found in 1602 in the ship's logbook of Captain Willem van West-Sahnen.

The English traveler Thomas Herbert first used the word "dodo" in print in his 1634 travelogue, where he claimed it was used by the Portuguese who visited Mauritius in 1507.

Emmanuel Altham used the word in a letter from 1628, in which he also declared his Portuguese origin. As far as is known, no surviving Portuguese source mentioned this bird. However, some authors still claim that the word "dodo" comes from the Portuguese "doudo" (currently "doido"), which means "fool" or "crazy". It has also been suggested that "dodo" was an onomatopoeia of a bird's voice, imitating the two-note sound made by doves and similar to "doo-doo".

The Latin adjective "cucullatus" was first applied to the Mauritian dodo in 1635 by Juan Eusebio Niremberg, who gave the bird the name "Cygnus cucullatus" ("Cowled Swan"), based on the image of a dodo made by Carl Clusius in 1605.

A hundred years later, in a classic 18th-century work entitled The System of Nature, Carl Linnaeus used the word "cucullatus" as the species name for the dodo, but in combination with "Struthio" ("ostrich").

In 1760, Mathurin-Jacques Brisson introduced the currently used genus name "Raphus" by adding the above adjective to it.

In 1766, Carl Linnaeus introduced another scientific name - "Didus ineptus" ("stupid dodo"), which became synonymous with the earlier name according to the principle of priority in zoological nomenclature.

Mansur's 1628 painting: "Dodo among the Indian Birds"

Since there are no complete copies of the dodo, it is difficult to determine such features of appearance as the nature and color of the plumage. Thus, drawings and written evidence of encounters with Mauritian dodos in the period between the first documentary evidence and the disappearance (1598–1662) became the most important sources for describing their appearance.

According to most images, the dodo had a gray or brownish plumage with lighter flight feathers and a tuft of curly light feathers in the lumbar region.

The head was gray and bald, the beak was green, black or yellow, and the legs were yellowish with black claws.

The remains of birds brought to Europe in the 17th century show that they were very large, about 1 meter in height, and could weigh up to 23 kg.

Increased body weights are characteristic of birds kept in captivity; the mass of individuals in the wild was estimated in the range of 10-21 kg.

A later estimate gives a minimum average weight of an adult bird of 10 kg, but this number has been questioned by a number of researchers. It is assumed that body weight depended on the season: in the warm and humid period of the year, individuals became obese, in the dry and hot period, the opposite was true.

This bird was characterized by sexual dimorphism: males were larger than females and had proportionately longer beaks. The latter reached 23 cm in length and had a hook at the end.

Most of the contemporary descriptions of dodos were found in the logbooks of ships of the Dutch East India Company that docked off the coast of Mauritius during the colonial period of the Dutch Empire. Few of these reports can be considered reliable, since some of them were probably based on earlier ones, and none of them were made by a naturalist.

“... Blue parrots were very numerous here, as were other birds, among which there was a species that was very noticeable due to its large size - larger than our swans, with a huge head, only half covered with skin, and as if dressed in a hood. These birds did not have wings, and in their place 3 or 4 dark feathers stuck out. The tail consisted of several soft concave ash-colored feathers. We called them Walghvögel for the reason that the longer and more often they were cooked, the less soft and more and more tasteless they became. Nevertheless, their belly and brisket tasted good and were easily chewed ... "

One of the most detailed descriptions of the bird was made by the English traveler Thomas Herbert in his book A Relation of some yeares' Travaile, begunne Anno 1626, into Africa and the greater Asia. , 1634):

Drawing made by Thomas Herbert in 1634

The French traveler Francois Coche (François Cauche), in a report published in 1651 on his journey, which included a two-week stay in Mauritius (from July 15, 638), left the only description of the egg and the voice of a bird that has come down to us.

“….. Only here and on the island of Digarrois (Rodriguez, probably meaning the dodo hermit) is born a dodo bird, which in shape and rarity can compete with the Arabian phoenix: its body is round and heavy, and it weighs less than fifty pounds . It is considered more curiosity than food; from them even greasy stomachs can get sick, and for the tender it is an insult, but not food.

From her appearance one can see the despondency caused by the injustice of nature, which created such a huge body, complemented by wings so small and helpless that they serve only to prove that it is a bird.

Half of her head is naked and as if covered with a thin veil, the beak is bent down and in the middle of it are the nostrils, from them to the tip it is light green mixed with a pale yellow tint; her eyes are small and round and rowling like diamonds (?); her attire consists of down feathers, on the tail there are three feathers, short and disproportionate. Her legs match her body, her claws are sharp. It has a strong appetite and is gluttonous. Able to digest stones and iron, whose description is better perceived from her image ... ".

“... I saw birds in Mauritius larger than a swan, without feathers on the body, which is covered with black fluff; the back is rounded, the rump is decorated with curly feathers, the number of which increases with age. Instead of wings, they have the same feathers as the previous ones: black and curved. They do not have tongues, the beak is large and slightly bent down; the legs are long, scaly, with only three toes on each paw. He has a cry like a gosling, but this does not at all mean a pleasant taste, like the flamingos and ducks that we just talked about. In the clutch they have one egg, white, the size of a 1 sous roll, a stone the size of a chicken egg is applied to it. They lay on the grass they gather, and build their nests in the forest; if you kill the chick, you can find a gray stone in her belly. We call them "Nazareth birds". Their fat is a wonderful remedy for relief in the muscles and nerves ... "

In general, the message of François Coche raises some doubts, since, in addition to everything, it says that the "Nazareth bird" has three toes and no tongue, which does not correspond at all to the anatomy of the Mauritian dodos. This led to the erroneous conclusion that the traveler described another related species, which was later given the name "Didus nazarenus". However, most likely, he confused his information with data on the then little-studied cassowaries, besides, there are other contradictory statements in his notes.

As for the origin of the concept of "Nazareth bird", the Russian scientist Joseph Hamel explained it in 1848 by saying that this Frenchman, having heard the translation of the original name of the bird "walghvogel" ("Oiseaudenausée" - "nauseous bird"), the word "nausée" (nausea ) correlated with the geographical point "Nazaret", indicated on the maps of those years near Mauritius.

The mention of a "young ostrich" taken on board a ship in 1617 is the only report of a possible young dodo.

A drawing of a dodo head by Cornelis Saftleven in 1638 is the last original depiction of the bird.

About twenty images of dodos of the 17th century are known, copied from living representatives or stuffed.

Drawings by different artists have noticeable differences in details, such as beak coloration, tail feather shape, and overall coloration. Some experts, such as Anton Cornelius Audemans and Masauji Hachisuka, put forward a number of versions that the paintings could depict individuals of different sex, age, or in different periods of the year.

Finally, there have been suggestions about different species, but none of these theories have been confirmed. To date, on the basis of the drawings, it is impossible to say for certain how much they generally reflected reality.

British palaeontologist and dodo specialist Julian Hume argues that the nostrils of living dodos must have been slit-like, as shown in the sketches from the Gelderland, as well as in the paintings of Cornelis Suftleven, Mansour and the work of an unknown artist from the collection of the Crocker Art Museum. According to Hume, the wide-open nostrils often seen in paintings indicate that the subjects were stuffed rather than live birds.

A logbook from the Dutch ship Gelderland (1601-1603), discovered in the archives in the 1860s, contains the only sketches authentically created in Mauritius from living or recently killed individuals. They were drawn by two artists, one of whom, more professional, could be called Joris Joostensz Laerle. On the basis of what material, live birds or stuffed animals, subsequent images were created, it is not possible to find out today, which harms their reliability.

The classic image of the dodo is of a very fat and clumsy bird, but this view is probably exaggerated. The generally accepted opinion of scientists is that many of the old European images were obtained from birds overfed in captivity or roughly stuffed stuffed.

The Dutch painter Roelant Savery was the most prolific and influential painter of the dodos. He painted at least ten paintings.

His famous 1626 work, now known as Edwards' Dodo (now in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London). It has become a typical image of the dodo and served as the primary source for many others, despite the fact that it shows an overly fat bird.

Almost nothing is known about the habits of the dodo due to the scarcity of information. Studies of the bones of the hind limbs show that the bird could run quite fast. Since the Mauritian dodo was a flightless bird and there were no predatory mammals or other enemies on the island, it probably nested on the ground.

The habitat preferences of the dodo are unknown, but old reports state that these birds inhabited forests in the drier coastal areas in the south and west of Mauritius. This opinion is supported by the fact that the marsh Mar-aux-Songs, in which most of the remains of dodos are found, is located near the sea, in the southeastern part of the island. Such a limited range could have made a significant contribution to the extinction of the species.

On a 1601 map from the logbook of the ship Gelderland, off the coast of Mauritius, a small island is visible where dodos were caught. Julian Hume suggested that this island was in Tamarin Bay, on the west coast of Mauritius. The remains of birds found in the caves of mountainous areas prove that birds were also found on the hills.

Sketch of three dodos from the Crocker Museum of Art, made by Savery in 1626

“….These burgomasters are majestic and proud. They stood before us, resolute and determined, their beaks wide open. Lively and bold when walking, they could hardly take a step to meet us. Their weapon was a beak, with which they could bite cruelly; they ate fruit; they did not have good plumage, but they had enough fat in excess. Many of them, to our common joy, were brought on board ... ".

In addition to fallen fruit, the dodo probably fed on nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. The Dutch zoologist Anton Cornelius Oudemans suggested that since Mauritius has dry and rainy seasons, the dodo apparently fattened up at the end of the wet season by eating ripe fruits in order to survive the dry season when food was scarce. Contemporaries described the “greedy” appetite of the bird.

Some pioneers considered dodo meat tasteless and preferred to eat parrots or pigeons, others described it as tough but good. Some hunted dodos only for the stomachs, which were considered the tastiest part of the bird. Dodos were very easy to catch, but hunters had to beware of their powerful beaks.

They became interested in dodos and began to export living individuals to Europe and the East.

The number of birds that made it to their destinations in one piece is unknown, and unclear, as they correlate with paintings from those years and a number of exhibits in European museums.

The description of a dodo that Hamon Lestrange saw in London in 1638 is the only mention that directly refers to a living specimen in Europe.

In 1626, Adrian van de Venne drew a dodo he claimed to have seen in Amsterdam, but did not say if he was alive. Two living specimens were seen by Peter Mundy in Surat between 1628 and 1634.

Drawing of a specimen that was in the Prague collection of Emperor Rudolf II. The author of the drawing is Jacob Hufnagel

Drawing of a dodo by Adrian van de Venne in 1626

The presence of solid stuffed dodos indicates that the birds were brought to Europe alive and later died there; it is unlikely that there were taxidermists on board the ships that came to Mauritius, and alcohol has not yet been used to preserve biological exhibits.

Most of the tropical exhibits have been preserved in the form of dried heads and legs. Based on a combination of contemporary stories, paintings and stuffed animals, Julian Hume concluded that at least eleven of the exported dodos were delivered alive to their final destinations.

Like many other animals that developed in isolation from serious predators, dodos were not at all afraid of people. This lack of fear and inability to fly made the bird easy prey for sailors. Although anecdotal reports have described the massive slaughter of dodos to replenish ship supplies, archaeological studies have not found strong evidence of human predation.

The bones of at least two dodos have been found in caves near BaieduCap, which served as a refuge for maroons and runaway convicts in the 17th century, and were not easily accessible to dodos due to the mountainous, rugged terrain.

The number of people in Mauritius (a territory of 1860 km²) in the 17th century never exceeded 50 people, but they introduced other animals, including dogs, pigs, cats, rats and crab-eating monkeys, which ravaged dodo nests and competed for limited food resources.

At the same time, people destroyed the dodo's forest habitat. The impact on the abundance of the species from introduced pigs and macaques is currently considered to be more significant and significant than from hunting. The rats may not have been such a big threat to the nests, as the dodos are used to dealing with native ground crabs.

It is assumed that by the time people arrived in Mauritius, the dodo was already rare or had a limited range, since it would hardly have died out so quickly if it occupied all the remote areas of the island.

There is controversy around the date of the extinction of the dodo. The last widely accepted report of dodo sightings is a report from sailor Volkert Everts on the shipwrecked Dutch ship Arnhem dated 1662. He described birds caught on a small island near Mauritius (now thought to be Îled'Ambre Island):

“... These animals, when we approached, froze, looking at us, and calmly remained in place, as if they had no idea if they had wings to fly away, or legs to run away, and allowing us to approach them as close as we wanted. Among these birds were those which in India are called Dod-aersen (this is a species of very large geese); these birds do not know how to fly, instead of wings they just have small processes, but they can run very fast. We drove them all into one place so that we could catch them with our hands, and when we grabbed one of them by the leg, she made such a noise that all the others immediately ran to her rescue and, as a result, they themselves were also caught ... "

The last reported sighting of the dodo was recorded in the hunting records of the governor of Mauritius, Isaac Johannes Lamotius, in 1688, giving a new approximate date for the disappearance of the dodo - 1693.

Although the dodo's rarity was reported as early as the 17th century, its extinction was not recognized until the 19th century. Partly for religious reasons, since extinction was considered impossible (until Georges Cuvier proved the opposite), and partly because many scientists doubted that dodos ever existed. In general, he seemed too strange a creature, so many believed that he was a myth. In addition, the possibility was taken into account that dodos could have survived on other, yet unexplored islands of the Indian Ocean, despite the fact that vast territories of both Madagascar and mainland Africa remained poorly studied. For the first time this bird as an example of extinction due to human activity was cited in 1833 by the British magazine The Penny Magazine.

The only surviving remains of dodos from among the individuals brought to Europe in the 17th century are:

• dried head and paw in Oxford University Museum of Natural History;
• a paw kept in the British Museum, now lost;
• a skull in the Copenhagen Zoological Museum;
• upper jaw and leg bones in the National Museum of Prague.

Skeleton compiled by Richard Owen from bones found in the Mar-aux-Songes swamp

26 museums around the world have significant collections of dodo biological materials, almost all of which are found in Mar-aux-Songes. The London Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Zoology at the University of Cambridge, the Senckenberg Museum, the Darwin Museum in Moscow, and a number of others have almost complete skeletons made up of individual bones.

The skeleton in the Darwin Museum was previously in the collection of a Russian horse breeder, deputy chairman of the Bureau of the Ornithology Department of the Imperial Russian Society for the Acclimatization of Animals and Plants and a full member of the Russian Ornithological Committee A. S. Khomyakov, nationalized in 1920.

Imaginary "white dodo" from the island of Réunion (or the Réunion dodo hermit) is now considered an erroneous guess, based on contemporary reports of the Réunion ibis and on the 17th-century depictions of dodo-like white birds made in the 17th century by Peter Witos and Peter Holstein.

The confusion began when the Dutch captain Bontecou, ​​who visited Réunion around 1619, mentioned in his journal a heavy, flightless bird called dod-eersen, although he did not write anything about its coloration.

When this journal was published in 1646, it was accompanied by a copy of Savery's sketch from the Crocker Art Gallery. The white, dense and flightless bird was first mentioned as part of the Réunion fauna by Senior Officer Tatton in 1625. Single mentions were subsequently made by the French traveler Dubois and other contemporary authors.

In 1848, Baron Michel-Edmond de Sély-Longchamp gave these birds the Latin name Raphus solitarius, because he believed that those reports referred to a new species of dodo. When naturalists of the 19th century discovered images of white dodos dating back to the 17th century, it was concluded that this particular species was depicted on them. Anton Cornelius Audemans suggested that the reason for the discrepancy between the drawings and the old descriptions lies in sexual dimorphism (the paintings allegedly depicted females). Some authors believed that the described birds belonged to a species similar to the Rodrigues hermit dodo. It came to hypotheses that white specimens of both the dodo and the hermit dodo lived on Reunion Island.

White dodo. Drawing by Peter Holstein. Mid 17th century

17th century illustration sold at Christie's auction

In 2009, a previously unpublished 17th-century Dutch illustration of a white-and-grey dodo was auctioned by Christie's. It was planned to fetch £6,000 for her, but in the end she left for £44,450. Whether this illustration was drawn from a stuffed animal or from earlier images remains unknown.

The unusual appearance of the dodo and its importance as one of the most famous extinct animals has repeatedly attracted writers and figures of popular culture.

So the expression "dead as a Dodo" (dead as a dodo), which is used to refer to something outdated, as well as the word "dodoism" (something extremely conservative and reactionary), entered the English language.

Similarly, the idiom "togothewayoftheDodo" (to go the way of the dodo) has the following meanings: "to die" or "become obsolete", "to go out of common use or practice", or "become part of the past".

Alice and Dodo. Illustration by J. Tenniel for Lewis Carroll's fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland"

In 1865, at the same time that George Clark began to publish reports of excavations of dodo remains, the bird, whose reality had just been proven, appeared as a character in Lewis Carroll's fairy tale Alice in Wonderland. It is believed that the author inserted Dodo into the book, identifying himself with him and taking this name as a personal pseudonym due to a stammer, which caused him to involuntarily pronounce his real name as "Do-Do-Dodgson." The popularity of the book made the dodo a well-known symbol of extinction.

Coat of arms of Mauritius

Today, the dodo is used as an emblem on many types of products, especially in Mauritius. The dodo is represented on the coat of arms of this country as a shield holder. In addition, the image of his head appears on the watermarks of Mauritian rupee banknotes of all denominations.

Many conservation organizations, such as the Durrell Wildlife Foundation and Durrell Wildlife Park, use the image of the dodo to draw attention to the protection of endangered species.

The dodo has become a symbol of the destruction of species as a result of careless or barbaric intrusion from the outside into the existing ecosystem.

A.A. Kazdym

List of used literature

Akimushkin I.I. "Dead like a dodo" // Animal World: Birds. Fish, amphibians and reptiles. Moscow: Thought, 1995

Galushin V.M., Drozdov N.N., Ilyichev V.D., Konstantinov V.M., Kurochkin E.N., Polozov S.A., Potapov R.L., Flint V.E., Fomin V.E. . Fauna of the World: Birds: Directory M.: Agropromizdat, 1991

Vinokurov A.A. Rare and endangered animals. Birds / edited by Academician V.E. Sokolov. M .: "Higher School", 1992.

Hume J.P. Check A.S. The white dodo of Réunion Island: unraveling a scientific and historical myth // Archives of natural history. Vol. 31, No. 1, 2004

Dodo skeleton find in Mauritius

Dodo Bird: After Death

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It is believed that dodos were the first species of birds that man purposefully exterminated. But is it really so? Documents of that time do not confirm the prevailing misconception that people arranged mass hunts for them. So what did lead to the disappearance of these funny and gullible birds? Alas, a tragic accident.

When the British want to say that some living creature died out quickly enough, they use phraseological units: " as dead as a dodo", which can be translated: "dead like a dodo." And this is no coincidence - the flightless relatives of pigeons from the family Raphinae, better known as the dodos that lived in the Mascarene Islands, were exterminated before zoologists had time to properly study them. Perhaps that is why the reliability of information about these birds in most cases is very doubtful. The name of the dodo is still shrouded in a large cloud of myths and legends.

And perhaps the most famous myth is that the dodo was exterminated directly by people. Like, uncontrolled hunting for these defenseless birds led to their rapid disappearance. True, two more reasons are called - the destruction of the habitat of dodos and the harm caused to them by animal species alien to Mascarene introduced by humans. However, all this is considered as side factors that only finished off already endangered birds.

But is it really so? Most likely no. Oddly enough, but people put much less effort into the extinction of the dodo than rats, cats, pigs and dogs. However, let's talk about everything in order.

In any ornithological reference book, you can read that there were three types of dodos. One of them, the Mauritian dodo ( Raphus cucullatus) has been studied most fully - in the Oxford Museum there was (alas, died in a fire) his effigy, and in addition, biologists have several incomplete skeletons at their disposal (one of them is stored in the Moscow Darwin Museum). In addition, several dodos were taken from the island to Europe, where they lived in captivity for a long time, but, alas, did not breed. And a lot of people saw them. That is, we can say for sure about him that this bird really existed.

But with other species it is much more difficult. Neither drawings, nor stuffed animals, nor their skeletons are at the disposal of zoologists. And never was. So, for example, all the information about the desert dodo ( Pezophaps solitaria), who lived on the island of Rodrigues, are limited to only five messages from ship captains and travelers. The most detailed description of it was made by François Lega. However, even his contemporaries called this traveler a 100% liar. Therefore, until now, many scientists consider his book "The Journey and Adventures of François Lega and his Companions ..." to be a collection of retellings of other people's fictions.

But the strangest thing is that neither Lega nor other naturalists drew this bird (despite the fact that, according to Leg's information, the hermits were not afraid of people at all - that is, they did not have to rush around the island to capture on paper ). As a result, until now no one knows how the hermit actually looked. And no one has ever seen any physical evidence, not even a small feather, from a dodo from Rodrigues Island. Even paleontologists, who recently unearthed several skulls of the Mauritian dodo in Mauritius, could not find anything like it on Rodrigues.

The rate of its extinction is also very interesting, if we compare them with those of the Mauritian dodo. Togo was first described in 1598 (reported by the Dutch captain van Nek), and the last sighting is dated 1693. That is, the species became extinct about a hundred years before the first stage of the colonization of Mauritius. Now let's see what happened to the hermit: the first meeting was in 1730, and the last in 1761. That is, this species was exterminated in 30 years! And this despite the fact that Rodrigues was much less visited by the Dutch than Mauritius. I don't know about you, but this whole story seems suspicious to me.

Therefore, the question is quite logical - did this dodo exist at all? Maybe it was just a kind of local delirium tremens that appeared to captains and travelers after they had drunk with rum? It is hard to believe that the bird, which, according to eyewitnesses, was "... common for these places", for no apparent reason disappeared for thirty years without any trace at all. Which even paleontologists to this day cannot find.

Also very doubtful is the information about the third type of dodo - white or reunion ( Raphus solitarius). Here, too, there is no material evidence and drawings. There are only three reports, the most detailed of which belongs to the naturalist Bory de Saint-Vincennes, who, by the way, was the last person to see this bird in 1801. And for the first time they saw him already in 1613! It turns out that this dodo has been dying out for almost two hundred years. And so shockingly that, like his Rodrigues colleague, he left nothing that would remind of him (including paleontologists). As you can see, there are strong doubts that this dodo, like the hermit, was a real animal, and not a myth.

But back to the Mauritian dodo, the existence of which no one doubts. These were large birds, weighing up to 15-23 kilograms, which could not fly at all (due to the reduction of the keel on the sternum and underdeveloped wings). They lived in the forests, feeding on nuts and other fruits that had fallen from trees. Most likely, dodos led a solitary lifestyle, connecting with their "half" only for the time of mating and incubation.

All eyewitnesses noted some directly pathological credulity of dodos (they were not at all afraid of people and domestic animals, but for the inhabitants of the island, where there were no large predators at all, this is quite normal), however, they also said that in case of danger, the dodo desperately defended himself , using its strong beak 23 centimeters long.

The most interesting thing is that dodos did not make nests at all. The female laid her only egg right on the ground, and so she incubated. The male brought her food, and also helped protect the masonry from those who like to profit from eggs (mainly lizards and snakes). But the dodos practically did not care about the hatched chick, and he began an independent life quite early. And, apparently, a lot of them died in the first years of life from accidents and in the stomachs of snakes.

It follows from this that the number of dodos, apparently, has never been particularly large. Therefore, reports of hundreds of birds killed by sailors are most likely an invention of journalists and animal rights activists of the 20th century. The point is also that in the ship's logs of the Portuguese, Dutch and French ships of that time there is not a word about mass "dron harvesting". Although these documents report on the hunting and harvesting of huge sea turtles.

However, there could be no reports of dodo hunting because everyone who tasted this bird admitted that it was practically inedible. The Dutch captain Wiebrand van Warwijk wrote that their meat tasted disgusting. “It was impossible to eat these big birds,” says the sailor, who had been sailing for several months before and had not seen fresh food all this time!

Other captains confirmed the opinion of their colleague. There is even evidence that sailors were specifically forbidden to hunt dodos so as not to waste time. The English traveler Thomas Herbert in 1634 also gave an unflattering assessment of the taste of dodos: "These birds are more likely a miracle than food, since their fatty stomachs, although they could satisfy hunger, they tasted disgusting and unnutritious."

Only one thing follows from this - a person could not exterminate dodos through uncontrolled hunting, since there was simply no need to hunt them. The version that people contributed to the extinction of birds by destroying their habitat also does not hold water - the first large plantations on the island appeared in the 70s of the 17th century, when the number of dodos had already seriously decreased. Only the third assumption remains - the birds were destroyed by animals brought by people.

And here it is, quite similar to the truth. However, pigs, cats and dogs are hardly particularly guilty of the extermination of dodos - they lived with the settlers on the coast and did not go inland, where dodos mostly hid. However, besides them, there were also "foreigners" on the island. In the holds of ships, people accidentally brought gray rats to the island, who really liked it there.

These nimble and smart animals immediately realized that it is very easy to get dodo chicks - after all, their parents practically do not protect them. It is possible that they also stole the eggs of these careless birds. Of course, no one saw this directly (rats prefer to rob at night), but there is indirect evidence that it was they who brought the dodo to the grave.

 

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