‘The keeper called it a Dodo, and in the ende of a chymney in the chamber there lay a heape of large pebble stones, wherof hee gave it many in our sight, some as big as nutmegs, and the keeper told us that she eats them (conducing to digestion).’ ‘It was kept in a chamber,’ recalled L’Estrange. He visited her in London, where she was exhibited as a public attraction in a small building not far from Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Our dodo was possibly next spotted in 1638 by the theologian Sir Hamon L’Estrange. He let out a cry and others came running forward to help the prisoner.’ Volkert Evertsz wrote in 1662: ‘I held one by the leg. Dutch sailors have commented on how friendly the dodo could be. Although in no way domesticated, dodos were social birds who would come to the aid of a distressed fellow and protect their young. Most of the dodos held in captivity in Europe and Asia ended up obese and it is contemporary paintings of these large-cropped bulbous birds that most people have in mind when thinking of the dodo, a far cry from the nimble fruit-eater of wild Mauritius suggested by archaeological evidence.Īn estimated 17 dodos were shipped overseas in the early 1600s. However, she wouldn’t have had much exercise and probably became fat very quickly. On board ship our dodo would have been fed on a diet of ship’s biscuits, which, if she was anything like similar species, she probably enjoyed very much. However there is every chance that she survived the long journey. Unfortunately there are no records confirming the dodo’s safe arrival. Altham’s bird sailed to England aboard a ship called The William, under the captaincy of a Mr Perce. Away from home for many years, he seems to have wanted the bird to become a new family pet and he wrote to his brother telling him to expect its delivery. However one possibility is that she left in around 1628, courtesy of the English diplomat Emmanuel Altham.Īround that time Altham sent a live dodo from Mauritius as a present to his family. We don’t know how old she was when she was captured and spirited away to Europe. This bird hatched from her mother’s single white egg on a grassy bed, deep in the forests of Mauritius. We can’t accurately pin down the gender of this individual, but the scant evidence suggests it was a female. For around 300 years the world’s only preserved dodo remains have resided at Oxford University. Today there is only one place you can see the face of a real dodo. ‘Even a long boiling would scarcely make them tender,’ reported a 17th- century Dutch ship’s captain. For possibly the last time in its existence, the dodo, a member of the pigeon family, was lucky. The scientists then used these lines to estimate the time that other events happened to the bird.Until comparatively recently mankind’s first question on discovering any new species was, ‘what does it taste like?’ The answer to this question could be very important to the future of that species, making the difference between survival and extinction. The dodo bones show repeated lines of arrested growth, which the researchers suggest correspond to the harsh conditions of the summer months when the birds were starved of food. A stormy summer seasonĪccording to evidence in the different layers and types of tissue of the 22 bones examined, the dodo seems to have adapted its lifestyle to Mauritius's stormy summer, from November to March.ĭuring this period, heavy rain and strong winds can strip trees of leaves, flowers and fruit, causing severe food shortages for the island's animals. Some sailors' accounts have survived, but they are often limited or unreliable - seamen tended to spin their dodo-sighting tales for dramatic effect rather than scientific accuracy. The dodo died out within a century after Dutch explorers arrived on Mauritius in the late 1500s, so little evidence has been left behind of what it really looked like or how it lived. 'So I was very pleased when the UCT team contacted me to say they had been given some more dodo bones to analyse and they wanted to team up.' 'But it wasn't quite enough evidence to make any strong conclusions about dodo lifestyles. The researchers were initially reluctant to cut up the exceptionally rare dodo bones from the Museum's historic collections.ĭr Steel says, 'Luckily, recent excavations in Mauritius provided us with a few broken bones that could be sacrificed. This is a breakthrough for Dr Lorna Steel, senior curator at the Museum, who began the work around a decade ago. They also used information about the lifestyle of birds that still live on Mauritius. Researchers from the Museum and the University of Cape Town (UCT) combined evidence from the bones with the historical accounts of sailors that visited Mauritius, the birds' home. Scientists examining the structure of the birds' bones have found new information about how quickly dodos grew, when they laid eggs and when they moulted.
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