Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) 

The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) was a flightless bird endemic to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Related to pigeons and doves, it stood about a meter tall, weighing about 20 kilograms (44 lb), living on fruit and nesting on the ground.

Extinction of the Dodo Bird

The dodo bird is commonly used as the quintessential representation of extinct species because its extinction occurred during recorded human history, and was directly attributable to human activity.

Although some controversy exists surrounding the extinction date of the dodo, the general accepted estimated extinction date is circa 1693.  As with many animals that have evolved in isolation from significant predators, the dodo was entirely fearless of people, and this, in combination with its flightlessness, made it easy prey.  Although dodo feathers were prized by Malay sailors for use in head dressings, and that there are reports of mass killings of dodos for provisioning of ships, archaeological investigations have not as yet found much evidence of human predation on these birds.

When humans first arrived on Mauritius, they also brought with them other animals that had not existed on the island before, including dogs, pigs, cats, rats, and Crab-eating Macaques, which plundered the dodo nests, while humans destroyed the forests where the birds made their homes; currently, the impact these animals – especially the pigs and macaques – had on the dodo population is considered to have been more severe than that of hunting. The 2005 expedition’s finds are apparently of animals killed by a flash flood; such mass mortalities would have further jeopardized an already extinction-prone species.

Few took particular notice of the extinct bird. By the early 19th century it seemed altogether too strange a creature, and was believed by many to be a myth. With the discovery of the first batch of dodo bones in the Mare aux Songes and the reports written about them by George Clarke, government schoolmaster at Mahébourg, from 1865 on, interest in the bird was rekindled. In the same year in which Clarke started to publish his reports, the newly vindicated bird was featured as a character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. With the popularity of the book, the dodo became a well-known and easily recognizable icon of extinction.

Wikipedia