The Dodo Blog

The first ever dodo bones, a fascinating story: A team of Mauritian and European experts are about to dig up Mare aux Songes. George Clark was the first to discover dodo bones on the same site some 140 years ago by Alan Grihault.

During his spare time Clark had made numerous attempts at finding remains of the Dodo. Around 1860, Dr. Philip Ayres requested Clark to join him in a search for bones at the Fort Hendrick site, but they found nothing. Clark was puzzled by the fact that the Natural History Society had been unlucky in their constant search for bones. He believed that the best places look in were the alluvial deposits found in the mouth of rivers.

Since he was teaching in Mahébourg, he concentrated his efforts in the south-eastern part of the island. On his map, he noticed three rivers running into the sea, forming a marshy delta in an area close to where the airport is now located. He assumed that if any bones had been washed away by these rivers, they would be deposited in the mud of the delta.

During the 1860s, the first railway lines were being constructed in Mauritius, and George Clark extended his search area along railway excavations between Curepipe and Mahébourg. [..]

It must have been an exciting moment when he recorded the following in his Journal:

“Shortly before the completion of the railway [19th October 1865] I was walking along the embankment one morning when I noticed some Coolies removing peat soil from a small morass (…) I stopped and examined them as they appeared to belong to birds and we had always been on the lookout for bones of the(…) Dodo. So I filled my pocket with the most promising ones for further examination.

A Mr Clarke, the Government schoolmaster of Mahébourg, had Professor Owen’s book on the Dodo so I took the bones to him for comparison (…) The result showed that many of the bones undoubtedly belonged to the Dodo.”

Update: unfortunately the article from Lexpress is gone.

Bringing the dodo back to life …, an excellent article by By Steve Connor, from The New Zealand Herald, about this new expedition:

Much of what is known about the appearance of the dodo comes from contemporary drawings and paintings. But these were often inaccurate, subject to the fashions of the time – such as the 17th century predilection for painting over-plump birds.

“The dodo, one of the most documented and famous of birds and a leading contender as the icon of extinction, has endured more than its fair share of overzealous misinterpretation,” said Dr Hume.

In fact, it became so mythologised that some 19th-century scholars began to doubt that it ever existed, believing that the rather poorly preserved specimens were elaborate hoaxes.

In fact all of these specimens were made from the incomplete skeletons of many different individuals. Trying to guess what the real dodo looked like was an uphill struggle.

One problem was its weight. Many of the early paintings depict it as an overweight, almost obese creature that could barely support itself. But, at least one illustration dating from the first Dutch exploration depicts the dodo as a rather slim, even nimble bird.

In reality, it is possible that the dodo was both fat and slim. In other words it may have been adapted to putting on weight quickly in times of plenty – during the wet season, for instance, when there was lots of ripe fruit to eat – which would have allowed it to survive the leaner times of the dry season.

Dodos kept in captivity could just have been overfed, which is why they tended to look much fatter than other birds of a similar shape and size.

Hello and welcome to the dodo blog! This is a blog about dodos in the news, science, culture, art, history, biology, books, media and their influence in the modern culture. Why dodos? Among the extinct animals, the dodos are the most popular, they are icons, they are symbols, they are very famous, they are almost super-stars! But they are much better than super-stars: dodos don’t get drunk and fight with reports, dodos don’t use weird clothes that are going to be next tendency in fashion, dodos don’t make scandals and appear in the first page of a tabloid, dodos don’t expend their money with drugs or illegal substances, dodos don’t make stupid comments. Well, actually they don’t do anything more, because… they are dead. Extinct!

Poor little stupid and dead birds. I think that they deserve more love and that is one of the reasons of this blog. I created it to keep their memory alive, to keep alive the awful and massive power of the human being of destroy the nature, to share the dodo history, to show how popular they are nowadays, to show what people are saying about them and where you can find them. This is a homage blog to dodos.

However, if you never heard about them and have no idea about the Mauritius Islands, don’t worry, this is your lucky day. Wikipedia has a great Dodo article: the history, etymology, the sad end, other interesting information and pictures – of reconstructed Mauritius Dodos at museums. And what the hack the word dodo means? Nobody is sure about it:

The origin of the word “Dodo” is one of controversy. It is related to the Dutch word “dodaars” (referring to the feathers on its buttocks) the name of the little Grebe or Dabchick in the Dutch language. Probably not entirely because they shared a similar physical appearance (apart from the feathers on the buttocks), but because the dodo, like the little Grebe, couldn’t walk very well, making it an easy prey for Dutch sailors. Others believe it’s related to the archaic Portuguese word “doudo” meaning fool or simpleton. Yet another possibility, as author David Quammen has noted in his book “Song of the Dodo”, “that ‘dodo’ was an onomatopoeic approximation of the bird’s own call, a two-note pigeony sound like ‘doo-doo’.”

But how are we going to know now, since they killed all of them in less than one century? I’m still pissed angry about this, since the day I discovered that my changes to see a real dodo were zero. Anyway, back to the dodos, the dodo is the “star” of the article about extinct birds at Wikipedia and the Coat of arms of Mauritius has a dodo! (I’m not sure if those are good things, very sad or good but sad.) And, if you don’t know yet, Mauritius was the place that dodos lived before the Dutch discover how good they could it be as food.

Be prepare for a lot of images of dodos, a plenty of links and all the other information that I can find. All the links, suggestions and comments are welcome: feel free to do it and post any commens. My name is Bibi and I’m a dodo.