Report on the reasons for the extinction of the dodo bird. Exterminated by man ... "... Dead as a dodo .... Material remains of the species

This story may seem fictional if it were not for a fabulous reality. On the lost, uninhabited islands in the Indian Ocean (Mauritius, Rodriguez and Reunion, belonging to the Mascarene archipelago), in ancient times, dodo birds lived - representatives of the dodo family.

Outwardly, they resembled turkeys, although they were two or three times larger than them. One dodo bird weighed 25-30 kg with a growth of 1 meter. Long neck, bare head, no signs of any plumage or tuft, a very massive intimidating beak resembling an eagle. Four-toed paws and a kind of wings, consisting of several modest feathers. And a small crest, the so-called tail.

Gullible bird dodo

The island, on which the birds lived, was truly paradise: there were simply no people, no predators, or any other potential danger to the dodo. Dodo birds did not know how to fly, swim and run fast, but it was useless, because no one offended the dodo. All food was simply under their feet, which did not necessitate obtaining it by rising into the air or sailing on the ocean. Another distinctive characteristic of the dodo bird was a large belly, formed due to being too passive; he just crawled on the ground, which made the movement of birds very slow.

Dodo lifestyle

Dodo birds were characterized by a secluded lifestyle; they united in pairs only to raise offspring. The nest, in which a single large white egg was laid, was built in the form of an earthen mound with the addition of branches and palm leaves. The incubation process lasted 7 weeks, and both birds (female and male) took part in it in turn. The parents carefully guarded their nest, not allowing strangers closer than 200 meters to it. It is interesting that if an "outside" dodo approached the nest, then an individual of the same sex went to drive it out.

According to the information received from those distant times (late 17th century), the dodos, calling each other, loudly flapped their wings; moreover, for 4-5 minutes they made 20-30 strokes, which created a loud noise that could be heard at a distance of more than 200 meters.

The brutal extermination of dodo birds

The idyll of the dodo ended with the arrival of Europeans on the islands, who took such easy prey as an excellent basis for food. Three slaughtered birds were enough to feed an entire ship's crew, and the entire voyage took several dozen salted dodo. However, sailors considered their meat unpalatable, and an easy hunt for a dodo (when it was enough to hit a gullible bird with a stone or a stick) was uninteresting. The birds, despite their powerful beak, did not offer resistance and did not run away, especially since their excessive weight prevented them from doing so. Gradually, the extraction of drones turned into a kind of competition: "who will score the most dodo", which can be safely called a ruthless and barbaric extermination of harmless natural creatures. Many tried to take such extraordinary specimens with them, but the seemingly tame creatures could not stand the bondage imposed on them: they cried, refused food and eventually died. The historical fact confirms that when the birds were taken from the island to France, they shed tears, as if realizing that they would never see their native lands.

100 malicious years - and there are no dodos

The birds got their name "dodo" (from Portuguese) from the same sailors, who considered them stupid and idiots. Although in this case it was the people of the sea who acted stupid, because an intelligent person would not ruthlessly destroy a defenseless and unique creature.

Ship rats, cats, monkeys, dogs, pigs brought to the islands by people also took an indirect part in the extermination of dodo birds, eating eggs and chicks. In addition, the nests were located on the ground, which only made it easier for predators to exterminate them. In less than 100 years, not a single dodo has remained on the islands. The history of the dodo is a vivid example of how a merciless civilization destroys everything on its way that is given free of charge by Nature.

As a symbol of the barbaric destruction of natural creatures by the Jersey Animal Conservation Trust, the dodo bird was chosen as an emblem.

Alice in Wonderland - the book from which the world learned about the dodo bird

How did the world know about the existence of such an unusual bird? On which island did the dodo bird live? And did it really exist?

The public learned about the dodo birds, which could remain in oblivion for a long time, thanks to Lewis Carroll and his fairy tale "Alice in Wonderland". There, the dodo bird is one of the characters, and many literary scholars believe that Lewis Carroll described himself in the form of the dodo bird.

There was a single dodo stuffed in the world; in 1637 they managed to bring a live bird from the islands to England, where they earned money for a long time by showing such an extraordinary specimen. After death, a stuffed animal was made from a feathered curiosity, which was placed in a museum in London in 1656. By 1755, it was spoiled by time, moths and bugs, so the curator of the museum decided to burn it. At the last moment before the "execution" one of the museum workers tore off a leg and head from the stuffed animal (they are best preserved), which have become priceless relics of the world of zoology.

Dodo is a flightless, extinct bird that lived on the island of Mauritius. The first mention of this bird arose thanks to sailors from Holland who visited the island at the end of the 16th century. More detailed data on the bird were obtained in the 17th century. Some naturalists have long considered the dodo a mythical creature, but later it turned out that this bird really existed.

Appearance

The dodo, known as the dodo bird, was quite large. Adults reached a weight of 20-25 kg, and their height was about 1 m.

Other characteristics:

a swollen body and small wings, indicating the impossibility of flight;
strong short legs;
paws with 4 toes;
short tail of several feathers.

These birds were slow and moved along the ground. Outwardly, the feathered something resembled a turkey, but there was no comb on its head.

The main characteristic is the hooked beak and the absence of feathering near the eyes. For some time, scientists believed that dodos are relatives of albatrosses due to the similarity of their beaks, but this opinion has not been confirmed. Other zoologists talked about being a bird of prey, including vultures, which also have no feathery skin on their heads.

It should be noted that beak length of the Mauritian dodo is approximately 20 cm, and its end is curved downward. The body color is fawn or ash gray. Feathers on the thighs are black, and whitish on the chest and wings. In fact, the wings were just their rudiments.

Reproduction and nutrition

According to modern scientists, dodos created nests from palm branches and leaves, as well as earth, after which one large egg was laid here. Incubation for 7 weeks the male and the female were engaged in alternation. This process, together with the feeding of the chick, lasted for several months.

In such a crucial period, the dodos did not allow anyone to approach the nest. It is worth noting that other birds were driven away by a dodo of the same sex. For example, if another female approached the nest, then the male sitting on the nest began to flap its wings and make loud sounds, calling on its female.

The dodo's diet was based on ripe palm fruits, leaves and buds. Scientists were able to prove exactly this type of nutrition based on stones found in the stomach of birds. These pebbles performed the function of grinding food.

Remains of the species and evidence of its existence

On the territory of Mauritius, where the dodo lived, there were no large mammals and predators, which is why the bird became gullible and very peaceful... When people began to arrive on the islands, they exterminated the dodos. In addition, pigs, goats and dogs were brought here. These mammals ate bushes where dodo nests were located, crushed their eggs, destroyed chicks and adult birds.

After the final extermination, it was difficult for scientists to prove that the dodo really existed. One of the specialists managed to find several massive bones on the islands. A little later, large-scale excavations were carried out in the same place. The last survey was conducted in 2006. It was then that paleontologists from Holland found in Mauritius Dodo skeleton remains:

beak;
wings;
paws;
spine;
element of the femur.

In general, the skeleton of a bird is considered a very valuable scientific find, but its parts are much easier to find than a surviving egg. To this day, it has survived only in one copy. Its value exceeds the value of an egg of the Madagascar Epiornis, that is, the largest bird that existed in ancient times.

Interesting facts about the bird

Dodo arouses great interest from scientists from all over the world. This explains the numerous excavations and studies that are carried out today in the territory of Mauritius. Moreover, some specialists are interested in the restoration of the species using genetic engineering.

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

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 his name to the islands.

This person was Diogo Fernandis Pereira, who sailed in these waters in 1507. On February 9, he discovered an island 400 miles east of Madagascar and named it Santa Apollonia. It must be a modern Reunion. Soon Pereira's ship "Serne" came across what is now Mauritius. The sailors landed and named the island after their ship - Ilha do Sernet.

Pereira moved towards India, and in the same year, a little later, Rodriguez discovered. The island was initially named Domingo Frize, but also Diego Rodriguez. The Dutch, apparently, found this name difficult to pronounce, and talked about an island called DiegoRay, which was then gallicized and turned into Dygarroys; however, the French themselves called the island Il Marianne.

Six years later, the second "discoverer", Pedro Mascareñas, arrived, visiting only Mauritius and Reunion. On this occasion, Mauritius was not renamed, but Sant-Apollonia (Reunion) received the name 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 declared the island their possession (Leopold, 2000). The Mascarene Islands represented a convenient staging post on the way to India, and soon crowds of adventurers flooded them (Akimushkin, 1969).

In 1598, after a squadron of 8 ships arrived in Mauritius, the Dutch admiral Jacob van Neck began to compile a list and description of all living things that were encountered 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 dodo, although scientists most often call it dodo (Bobrovsky, 2003).

Let's find out more about him ...

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

It was said that the dodo gave the impression of being almost tame, although it was impossible to keep them in captivity. "... They trustingly approach a person, but they cannot be tamed: as soon as they fall into captivity, they begin to stubbornly refuse any food until they die."

The quiet life for the dodo ended as soon as a person began to actively intervene in the life of the island nature.

Crews of ships replenished food supplies on the islands, for this purpose exterminating all living things 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, dodo gradually, from generation to generation, lost their ability to fly. The cooks of the Dutch ships did not know if this readily available tough-meat bird could be eaten. But very quickly the hungry sailors realized that the dodo was edible and it was very, very profitable to get it. Defenseless birds, waddling heavily from side to side and waving pitiful "stumps" of wings, unsuccessfully tried to flee from people. Only three birds were enough to feed the ship's crew. Several dozen salted dodos were enough for the whole voyage. They were so used to this that the holds of ships were filled to the brim with live and dead dodos, and the sailors of passing ships and caravels, just for the sake of sports interest, competed in who would kill these clumsy birds the most. 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 decline rapidly. They soon disappeared altogether. All together, people and animals, by the end of the 18th century, exterminated all dodos (Akimushkin, 1969; Leopold, 2000).

The three islands of the Mascarene archipelago - Mauritius, Reunion and Rodriguez - were apparently inhabited by three different types of dodo.

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

The Rodriguez dodo, or hermit, was last seen in 1761. Just 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's time to ask: was this dodo? Moreover, François Lega, the author of the most detailed description of the Rodriguez dodo, was sometimes called a one hundred percent liar, and his book “The Travel and Adventures of François Lega and His Companions ...” was considered by some scientists to be a collection of retellings of other people's inventions (Akimushkin, 1995; http: // www. bestreferat.ru/referat-6576.html).

The Reunion dodo was later exterminated. It was first mentioned in 1613 by the English captain Castleton, who landed on Reunion with his pets. Then the Dutchman Bontekoevan Horn, who spent 21 days on this island in 1618, mentioned this bird, calling it a "tufted tailed". The last traveler who saw and described this species was the Frenchman Borie-de Saint-Vincent, who visited Réunion in 1801. Domestic animals and humans also became the reason for the extinction 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, the very first mentions of this species were 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 searches led them to the island of Mauritius, everyone they turned to for advice here just shook their heads in doubt. “No, sir, we do not have such birds and never have been,” said both the shepherds and the peasants.

Photo 3.

1.3. Dodo in Europe

Mariners have 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 trip. As an unknown French priest who visited the island of Mauritius wrote in 1668: “Each of us wanted to take two birds with us in order to send them to France and there to transfer them to His Majesty; but on the ship the birds were probably dying of melancholy, refusing to eat and drink ”(cited by VA Krasilnikov, 2001).

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

There is also an occasional mention of the fact that one of the birds was exported 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. They could not marvel at her.

Artists were especially attracted by her downright grotesque appearance. And Peter-Holstein, and Hufnagel, and Franz Franken, and other famous painters were carried away by "dodo-painting". At that time, they say, more than fourteen portraits from the captive dodo were painted. It is interesting that Professor Ivanov found a color image of a dodo (one of these portraits) only in 1955 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 everyone who wanted to look at it. And when the bird died, it was skinned and stuffed 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, bewildered, he looked at a stuffed, moth-eaten, surreal bird with a ridiculous inscription on the label: "Ark" (ark?). And then he ordered to throw it into the trash heap.

Fortunately, a more educated person passed by by chance. Marveling at his unexpected luck, he pulled out the hook-nosed head of a dodo and a clumsy paw - all that was left of it - from the trash heap, and with his invaluable finds hurried to the merchant of rarities. The rescued paw and head were later again, but this time with great honors, were admitted to the museum. These are the only relics in the world left from the only stuffed dragon-like "dove", says Willie Leigh, one of the connoisseurs of the sad history of dodo. But Dr. James Greenway of Cambridge, in an excellent monograph on extinct birds, claims that there is another leg in the British Museum, and a head in Copenhagen that undoubtedly belonged to a once living dodo from Mauritius (Akimushkin, 1969).

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

The traditional image of the dodo is a fat, clumsy dove, but this opinion has been contested recently. Scientists have proven that old European drawings show overfed birds in captivity. The artist Maestro Mansour painted the dodo on his native islands of the Indian Ocean (Fig. 4.) and depicted the birds more slender. His drawings were studied by Professor Ivanov and proved that these drawings are the most accurate. Two live specimens were brought to the Indian Ocean islands in the 1600s, and the specimens drawn matched the description. As noted in Mauritius, the dodo ate ripe fruits at the end of the rainy season to survive the dry season when food was 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 have become famous even in astronomy. In honor of the dodo from Rodriguez, one constellation in the sky was named. In June 1761, the French astronomer Pingre spent some time on Rodriguez, observing Venus against the background of the solar disk (it was just then crossing it). Five years later, his colleague Le Monier, in order to preserve in centuries the memory of his friend's stay on Rodriguez and in honor of the amazing bird that lived on this island, named the new group of stars that he discovered between the Dragon and Scorpio the constellation of the Hermit. Wanting to mark him on the map, according to the customs of those times, a symbolic figure, Le Monier turned for help from Brisson's “Ornithology”, which was then popular in France. He did not know that Brisson did not include dodo in his book, and when he saw the name solitaria in the list of birds, that is, "hermit", he faithfully redrawn the animal so named. And he confused everything, of course: instead of an impressive dodo, a new constellation on the map was crowned with its little representative figure by a blue stone thrush - Monticolasolitaria (he lives now in southern Europe, and here - in Transcaucasia, Central Asia and southern Primorye) (Akimushkin, 1969 .).

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

Photo 5.

2.1. Dodo taxonomy and their evolution

By the beginning of the 19th century, knowledge about the systematic position of the dodo was very contradictory. At first, according to rumors and the first sketches, dodos were mistaken for dwarf ostrich birds, since the loss of flight and even a strong reduction of the wing skeleton is a frequent occurrence in this group of birds. This is what Karl Linnaeus thought at first, when he referred the dodo in his 10th edition of The System of Nature in 1758 to the genus of ostriches. There were also more bizarre opinions. Some naturalists considered the dodo a species of swan that had lost its wings, while others attributed the dodo to albatrosses, and even sandpipers and plovers. In the 1830s, 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 the time, the English morphologist and paleontologist, to whom we owe the word "dinosaur". And yet, over time, the opinion of scientists was inclined in favor of the fact that dodos are some kind of chicken that has lost the ability to fly, as is often found on the islands.

What scientists now consider the closeness of the dodo to pigeons was first expressed when studying the skull of a dodo, the Danish scientist naturalist J. Reinhardt. 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, fruit-eating pigeon." This point of view became widely accepted in science when hook-billed pigeons (Didunculus strigirostris) were first introduced to European collections from the oceanic islands of Western Samoa. The hook-billed pigeon is small, the size of an ordinary cisar, but also has a remarkable beak, ending with a sharp hook and a curved beak; along its edge there are teeth. The beak of this hermit from the island of Samoa immediately allows you to "recognize" in him a kind of fancy dodo beak. And what is remarkable, the toothed-billed pigeons, according to the reports of the first seafarers, 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 Savaya, they switched to nesting in trees, which saved them. Unfortunately, the dodo could not fly up the trees (Bobrovsky, 2003).

Photo 6.

All modern pigeons, of which 285 species are known, fly well. In the order of pigeon-like (Golumbiformes), in addition to the Pigeon and Drontovy families, there is also the Pteroelidae family. 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, which, finding itself on an uninhabited (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 for the origin and kinship of dodo. He found many differences in the structure of the head of dodos and pigeons. Then other authors joined him, especially after comparing bones and skeletons from Mauritius and Rodriguez. In his book "Dodo" (1961) Luttschwager criticized the "pigeon" hypothesis of the origin of these giant birds. In the structure of the hip joints, chest bones and paws of dodos, he found much in common not with pigeons, but with corncrake, belonging to the family of shepherd birds. Corncrake fly badly and in case of danger they try not to take off, but to escape. Moreover, corncrake inhabiting isolated islands lose their ability to fly, and many similar flightless shepherds (Mauritian shepherd, Mascarene coot, some chasers and moors - only 15 species) have died out like dodo (http://www.mybirds.ru/forums /lofiversion/index.php/t58317.html).

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

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

Kingdom: Animals
Type: Chordates
Subtype: Vertebrates
Class: Birds
Subclass: Newcomers
Order: Dove-like - 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 a well-developed down part. The beak is rather short, the nostrils are covered from above by leathery caps. The food is almost exclusively vegetable and primarily seeds, less often fruits and berries. All pigeons have a well-developed goiter, which serves both for the accumulation of food and for its softening; in addition, pigeons feed their chicks with milk produced in the goiter.
Family: Dorot (Raphidae) included 3 species:
- Mauritian dodo. Dodo, or Mauritian dodo, aka 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 Karl Linnaeus himself.
- Reunion Dodo In the rainforests of Reunion Island, another species lived - the white, or Bourbon, dodo (Raphusborbonicus), indeed almost white, slightly smaller than the dodo. Some experts doubt the existence of this species, since it is known only by description and drawings.
- Rodriguez Dodo - The third member of the family, the hermit dodo (Pezophapssolitarius), lived on Rodriguez Island. 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 gullible, extremely peaceful creature has completely lost the ability to recognize enemies. The dodo's only defense was its beak. In 1607, Admiral Vergouven visited Mauritius, who was the first to note that dodos, it turns out, can “bite very painfully” (Darrell, 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 cleaned up 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.

The ecological consequences of the extinction of the species

An interesting fact about dodos was discovered in 1973, when scientists noticed that there are old trees on the island of Mauritius - calvarimeter, which are almost never renewed. Trees of this species in the past were also not uncommon on the island, and now, over its entire area of 2045 square kilometers, no more than fifteen calvaria specimens grow. It turned out that their age is more than 300 years. The trees were still producing nuts, but none of the nuts germinated and new trees did not appear. 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 disappearance of the dodo and the extinction of the calvaria. He argues that these birds were an important breeding factor for trees. He assumed that the nuts would not germinate until they were chewed by the dodo and passed through his intestines. The pebbles that the dodo swallowed in its stomach destroyed the hard shell of the nuts, and the calvaria germinated. Temil suggests that evolution developed such a strong shell because the seeds of calvaria were readily swallowed by Dodo pigeons.

To test the hypothesis, the nuts were fed to turkeys with a similar stomach, and new trees grew from them after passing through the digestive system. With the disappearance of dodos, no other bird in Mauritius could destroy the hard shell of nuts, and these trees were threatened with extinction (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. Dodo hunters, disappointed and confused, 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 ground, rummaged in dusty talus on river steeps and in ravines. Good luck always comes to those who persist in pursuing it. And now 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 extensive excavations in the swamp discovered by Clark. They found many dodo bones and even several complete skeletons, which 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.

In 2006, a team of Dutch paleontologists discovered part of a dodo skeleton on the island of Mauritius (Fig.). Among the remains found are part of the thigh bone, paws, beak, spine and dodo wings. The bones of an extinct bird were found in a dried up swamp in Mauritius. Dutch researchers continue to search and hope to find entire skeletons.

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

Dodo bones are not as rare as their eggs, although they belong to the most valuable scientific findings.

Currently, the only surviving dodo egg. Some zoologists regard this large, creamy egg as the most important exhibit in their science. It must be worth hundreds of pounds more than the pale green egg of a large loon or the ivory fossil egg of the Madagascar Aepyornis, 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 methods have been actively discussed in recent years (Zelenyi mir, 2007).

2.8. Prospects for species restoration

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

Experiments with the isolation of paleo-DNA (that is, DNA from ancient fossil remains) have been carried out 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 began to implement a program of recreation using the preserved genetic material of an extinct animal species. 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 skeletons of a dodo. Scientists know only a few skeletons (Fig.) And dodo bones, 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 as follows. Firstly, 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 lying 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 turns out to be, as it were, sealed in a matrix of calcium carbonate. Before that, when extracted from bones, most of the calcium was simply washed out from the starting material. After all, they used to do it - from the remnants of bone material, they made a squeeze by special methods; put it in saline and washed out all the excess. Then, well-preserved cells were selected and the nuclei were “gouged out” of them (remember, it is in the nuclei that DNA is contained).
The success turned out to be 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, shells are a more convenient source of DNA not only because they are easier to extract nucleic acids from. An additional advantage is that the shell is less "attractive" for bacteria, whose DNA contaminates the DNA of the target species and makes it difficult to work with it.

And nevertheless, the most intriguing question remains open: can the obtained DNA be used to recreate long-extinct animals?

There seems to be no fundamental limitation to the cloning process. The schematic diagram is clear: we transplant the obtained cell nuclei into the eggs of cows, previously deprived of their 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 Dolly sheep, the success rate was 0.02% (Morozov, 2010).

Dodo 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), reached a meter in height.

The paws of a dodo with four fingers resembled 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 on 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 appearance 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 dodo, you just had to go up to him and hit him on the head with a stick. Having no previous natural enemies, the dodo was gullible. Perhaps that is why the sailors gave him the name "dodo" - from the common Portuguese word "doudo" ("doido" - "stupid", "crazy").

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

Drone belong to the order dove-like and have two genera of the genera Pezophaps and Raphus. The first contained the Rodriguez dodo (Pezophaps solitaria), and the second contained the Mauritian dodo (Raphus cucullatus). These birds reached impressive sizes due to isolation on the islands.

The dodo's closest living relative is the dodo and the Rodriguez dodo.

The maned pigeon is the closest relative of the dodo

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

One of the most famous and often copied depictions of the dodo, created by Rulant Severe in 1626

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

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

The first documented mention of the dodo appeared thanks to the Dutch sailors 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 noticed immediately, and many naturalists for a long time considered the dodo a mythical creature, until in the 1840s a study was carried out of the preserved remains of individuals brought to Europe at the beginning of the 17th century. At the same time, the kinship of dodo with pigeons was first indicated.

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

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.

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

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

The Rodriguez Dodo is the only extinct bird that astronomers have named the constellation after. It received the name Turdus Solitarius, and later the Lone Thrush.

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

Likewise, little can be said with certainty about her habits. The remains show that the Mauritian dodo was about 1 meter high and could weigh 10-18 kg.

The bird depicted in the paintings had 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. The Mauritian dodo is believed to have lost its ability to fly due to the abundance of food sources (believed to include fallen fruit) and the lack of dangerous predators on the island.

Ornithologists of the first half of the 19th century attributed the dodo to small ostriches, shepherds, and albatross, 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 is related to ... kites!

In 1842, Danish zoologist Johannes Theodor Reinhart suggested that the dodos were land pigeons, based on research on a skull he found in the royal collection in Copenhagen. Initially, this opinion was considered ludicrous by his colleagues, but in 1848 he was supported by Hugh Strickland and Alexander Melville, who published the monograph "Dodo and His Kindred" (TheDodoandItsKindred).

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

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

During the 19th century, several species were attributed to the same genus with the dodo, including the Rodriguez hermit dodo and the Reunion dodo - like Didus solitarius and Raphus solitarius, respectively.

Large bones found on Rodrigues Island (now established that they belonged to a male hermit dodo) led E. D. Bartlett to the conclusion of the existence of a larger new species, which he named Didus nazarenus (1851). Earlier it was invented by I. Gmelin (1788) for the so-called. The "Nazareth bird" is a partly mythical description of the dodo, which was published in 1651 by François Coch. It is now recognized as synonymous with Pezophaps solitaria. Rough sketches of the red-haired Mauritian shepherdess were also mistakenly attributed to the new species of dodo: 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 found that all of his descriptions and images were misinterpreted, and the discovered remains belong to an extinct member of the ibis family. Ultimately, it was named Threskiornis solitarius.

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

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

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

A 2002 genetic study showed that the separation of the "pedigrees" of the Rodriguez and Mauritian dodos occurred in the area of the Paleogene and Neogene border 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 should have retained the ability to fly for a long time after separation.

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

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

The English word wallowbirdes, which can be literally translated as "tasteless birds," is a tracing of the Dutch equivalent of walghvogel; wallow is dialectal and akin to Middle Dutch walghе, meaning tasteless, insipid, and nauseous.

Another message from the same expedition, which belonged to the pen of Heindrik Dirks Yolink (perhaps the very first mention of the dodo), says that the Portuguese who visited Mauritius earlier called those birds "penguins". However, they used the word fotilicaios to refer to the only spectacled penguins known at that time, and the one mentioned by the Dutchman appears to be derived from the Portuguese pinion ("clipped wing"), apparently indicating the small size of those of the dodo.

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

The origin of the word "dodo" is unclear. Some researchers trace it to the Dutch "dodoor" ("lazy"), others - to "dod-aars" meaning "fat-assed" or "bumpy-assed", which sailors may have 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 record of the word "dod-aars" occurs in 1602 in the logbook of Captain Willem van West-Saanen.

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

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

The Latin adjective "cucullatus" was first applied to the Mauritian dodo by Juan Eusebio Niremberg in 1635, giving the bird the name "Cygnus cucullatus" ("Hooded swan") based on an image of a dodo made by Charles Clusius in 1605.

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

In 1760, Maturin-Jacques Brisson introduced the now used genus name "Raphus", adding the above adjective

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

Mansour's 1628 painting: "Dodo among Indian birds"

Since complete specimens of dodo do not exist, it is difficult to determine such features of the 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 their disappearance (1598-1662) became the most important sources for describing their appearance.

According to most depictions, the dodo had gray or brownish plumage with lighter flight feathers and a bunch 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 weight is characteristic of captive birds; the weights of individuals in the wild were estimated in the range of 10-21 kg.

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

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

Most of the descriptions of the dodo, made by contemporaries, were found in the logs of the ships of the Dutch East India Company, docking off the coast of Mauritius during the colonial rule of the Dutch Empire. Few of these messages can be considered reliable, since some of them were probably based on earlier ones, and none of them was carried out by a naturalist scientist.

“... Blue parrots were very numerous here, like other birds, among which there was a variety very noticeable due to its large size - larger than our swans, with a huge head, only half covered with skin, and, as it were, dressed in a hood. These birds lacked wings, and in their place were 3 or 4 dark feathers. The tail consisted of several soft, concave, ash-colored feathers. We called them Walghvögel because the longer and more often they were cooked, the less mushy and more tasteless they became. Nevertheless, their belly and brisket were pleasant to the taste and easy to chew ... "

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 Afrique and the greater Asia. , 1634):

Drawing by Thomas Herbert in 1634

The French traveler François Cauche, in a report published in 1651 about his trip, which included a two-week stay in Mauritius (from July 15, 638), left the only surviving description of the egg and voicebird.

“… ..Only here and on the island of Digarrois (Rodriguez, probably referring to a hermit dodo) a dodo bird is born, 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 of a curiosity than food; from them and oily stomachs can get sick, and for the tender it is an insult, but not food.

Her appearance shines with despondency, caused by the injustice of nature, which created such a huge body, complemented by wings so small and helpless that they only serve to prove that this 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 there are nostrils, from them to the tip it is light green interspersed with a pale yellow tint; her eyes are small and like diamonds, round and rowling (?); her robe consists of downy 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 in Mauritius birds larger than a swan, without feathers on the body, which is covered with black down; the back is rounded, the rump is decorated with curly feathers, the number of which increases with age. Instead of wings, their feathers are the same as the previous ones: black and curved. They have no tongues, the beak is large and slightly bent downward; the legs are long, scaly, with only three toes on each paw. His scream is like that of a goose, but that doesn’t mean it tastes good, like the flamingos and ducks we just talked about. In the clutch they have one egg, white, the size of a 1 sous loaf, a stone the size of a hen's egg is applied to it. They lay it on the grass, which they collect, and build their nests in the forest; if you kill a chick, you can find a gray stone in its belly. We call them "birds of Nazareth." Their fat is a wonderful remedy for relieving muscles and nerves ... "

In general, François Coche's message raises some doubts, since, in addition to everything, it says that the “Nazareth bird” has three toes and no tongue, which does not at all correspond 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 the data on the then little-studied cassowaries, moreover, in his notes there are other contradictory statements.

As for the origin of the concept of "Nazareth bird", the Russian scientist Joseph Hamel in 1848 explained it by the fact that probably 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 aboard a ship in 1617 is the only report of a possibly young dodo.

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

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

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

Finally, suggestions have been made about different species, but none of these theories have been confirmed. At the present moment, on the basis of the drawings, it is impossible to say with certainty to what extent they generally reflected reality.

British paleontologist and dodo specialist Julian Hume argues that the nostrils of living dodos should have been slit, as shown in sketches from Gelderland, paintings by Cornelis Saftleven, Mansoor and works by an unknown artist from the Crocker Museum of Art collection. According to Hume, wide-open nostrils, which are often seen in paintings, indicate that stuffed animals were used as nature, rather than live birds.

The ship's log from the Dutch ship Gelderland (1601-1603), discovered in the archives in the 1860s, contains the only sketches authentically created in Mauritius from live or recently killed individuals. They were painted 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, the subsequent images were created, today it is not possible to find out what damages their reliability.

The classic image of the dodo is a very fat and awkward bird, but this point of view is probably exaggerated. The conventional wisdom of scientists is that many of the old European images were obtained from overfed birds in captivity or roughly stuffed stuffed animals.

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

His famous work from 1626, now known as the Dodo Edwards (now in the collection of the Natural History Museum, London). She became a typical dodo image and served as the primary source for many others, despite the fact that it shows an over-fed bird.

Almost nothing is known about the habits of the dodo due to the paucity of information. Studies of the hind limb bones show that the bird could run fast enough. 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 regions of the south and west of Mauritius. This opinion is supported by the fact that the Mar-aux-Songe bog, in which most of the dodo remains were found, is located near the sea, in the southeastern part of the island. Such a limited range could make a significant contribution to the extinction of the species.

A 1601 map from the Gelderland's logbook off the coast of Mauritius shows a small island where the dodos were caught. Julian Hume suggested that the island was in Tamarin Bay, on the west coast of Mauritius. Remains of birds found in caves in mountainous regions prove that birds were also found in higher elevations.

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

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

In addition to the fallen fruit, the dodo probably ate nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. Dutch zoologist Anton Cornelius Oudemans has suggested that since Mauritius has seasons of dryness and rainy, the dodo appears to have fattened up at the end of the wet season, feeding on ripe fruits to survive the dry season when food was scarce. Contemporaries described the bird's "greedy" appetite.

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

Dodo became interested and live individuals began to be exported to Europe and the East.

The number of birds that made it to their destination intact is unknown, and it is unclear, since they correlate with the paintings of those years and a number of exhibits in European museums.

The description of the 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, which, according to him, he saw in Amsterdam, but did not say a word whether he was alive. Two live specimens were seen by Peter Mundy at Surat between 1628 and 1634.

A drawing of an individual that was in the Prague collection of Emperor Rudolf II. Drawing by Jacob Hufnagel

Dodo drawing by Adrian van de Venne in 1626

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

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

Like many other animals that evolved in isolation from serious predators, dodo were not at all afraid of humans. This lack of fear and inability to fly made the bird an easy prey for sailors. Although individual reports have described the mass slaughter of dodos to replenish ship supplies, archaeological research has found no significant evidence of human predation.

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

The population of Mauritius (an area of 1,860 km²) in the 17th century never exceeded 50 people, but they brought in other animals, including dogs, pigs, cats, rats and cynomolgus monkeys, which ravaged dodo nests and vied for limited food resources.

At the same time, humans were destroying the dodo's forest habitat. The impact on the number of the species from the introduced pigs and macaques is currently considered more significant and significant than from hunting. Rats may not have been such a big threat to nests, as dodos are used to dealing with native earthen 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 had occupied all the remote areas of the island.

There is controversy surrounding the date of the dodo's disappearance. The last widely recognized report of dodo sightings is a report from sailor Volkert Everts from the shipwrecked Dutch ship Arnhem, dating back to 1662. He described the birds caught on a small island near Mauritius (currently believed to be on Îled'Ambre Island):

“... These animals, when we approached, froze, looking at us, and calmly remained in place, as if they had no idea whether 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 quickly. 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 overfished ... "

The last reported sighting of the dodo was recorded in the hunting notes of the governor of Mauritius, Isaac Johannes Lamotius, in 1688, which gives a new approximate date for the extinction of the dodo - 1693.

Although the rarity of the dodo 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 the opposite was proved by Georges Cuvier), and partly because many scientists doubted that dodo ever existed. In general, he seemed too strange a creature, so many believed that he was a myth. In addition, the likelihood that dodos could remain on other, still unexplored islands of the Indian Ocean was taken into account, despite the fact that vast territories of both Madagascar and mainland Africa remained poorly studied. For the first time this bird was cited as an example of extinction due to human activity in 1833 by the British magazine "The Penny Magazine".

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

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

Skeleton compiled by Richard Owen from bones found in the Mar-aux-Songe bog

26 museums around the world have significant collections of dodo biological materials, almost all of which are found in Mar-aux-Songe. The London Museum of Natural History, the American Museum of Natural History, the Museum of Zoology at Cambridge University, 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, assistant 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 Reunion Island (or Reunion dodo-hermit) is now considered an erroneous guess, which was based on reports from contemporaries about the Reunion ibis and on the images of white birds similar to dodos, made in the 17th century by Peter Vitos and Peter Holstein, which became famous in the 19th century.

The confusion began when the Dutch captain Bonteku, who visited Reunion around 1619, mentioned in his journal an overweight, flightless bird called dod-eersen, although he did not write anything about its color.

When this logbook 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 Reunion fauna by senior officer Tutton in 1625. Solitary mentions were later made by the French traveler Dubois and other contemporary authors.

In 1848, Baron Michel-Edmond de Seli-Longshan gave these birds the Latin name Raphus solitarius, because he believed that those messages were about a new kind of dodo. When naturalists of the 19th century discovered images of white dodos dating back to the 17th century, it was concluded that they captured this very view. Anton Cornelius Oudemans suggested that the reason for the discrepancy between the drawings and the old descriptions lies in sexual dimorphism (females were allegedly depicted in the paintings). Some authors believed that the birds described belonged to a species similar to the Rodriguez hermit dodo. It came to hypotheses that white individuals 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

In 2009, an unpublished 17th century Dutch illustration of a dodo in white and gray was put up for auction at Christie's. It was planned to bail out £ 6,000 for her, but in the end she left for £ 44,450. Whether this illustration was copied from a scarecrow or from earlier images remains unknown.

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

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

Likewise, the phraseologism "togothewayoftheDodo" (to leave the path of the dodo) has the following meanings: "die" or "outdated", "get out of general use or practice", or "become part of the past."

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

In 1865, at the same time that George Clarke began to publish reports about the excavation of the remains of the dodo, the bird whose reality had just been proven appeared as a character in Lewis Carroll's 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 stuttering, because of which he involuntarily pronounced 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, 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 supporter. In addition, the image of his head appears on the watermarks of the Mauritian rupee banknotes of all denominations.

Many conservation organizations, such as the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Fund and the Durrell Wildlife Park, use the dodo image to raise awareness of protecting endangered species.

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

A.A. Kazdym

List of used literature

Akimushkin I.I. "Dead as a dodo" // Animal world: Birds. Fish, amphibians and reptiles. M .: 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: Handbook M .: Agropromizdat, 1991

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

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

Dodo skeleton find in mauritius

BirdDodo: AfterdeathDo

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