In our imaginations, todos were quiet and slow birds, and a little dumb. In some ways the characteristics that favored their extinction were undoubtedly due to us humans, not their inability to fly. But the truth is different from this, above all from the fantasy created over the centuries about this almost “mythical” animal.
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Now a new study has cleared up some of the misunderstandings about the dodo, explaining that contrary to rumours, the species was fast and powerful, not the slow and insensitive ball of feathers hunted in the seventeenth century. By carefully examining early documentation and descriptions of the dodo, University of Southampton researchers have clarified preconceptions about these iconic creatures in a study. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.
“Was the dodo really the stupid, slow animal that we've been taught to believe? The few written accounts of living todos suggest that they were fast animals that loved the jungle,” explains Professor Mark Young. When Dutch sailors arrived in Mauritius in 1598, the island was teeming with adorable plump, flightless birds that died out within 70 years. The lack of hunters led him to hope for new human hunters arriving on the island, but most eyewitness accounts passed down over the centuries were “confused, inconsistent and unreliable”.
So, to clarify the issue definitively, English researchers separated fact from fiction from the first specimens, reports of sightings of living species, and the first taxonomic descriptions of species. Although many species, such as the Nazarene dodo, are fictitious, Besopops solitaria, a separate species closely related to the dodo, was actually found living on the island of Rodrigues, Mauritius. Later analysis of preserved bones and remains in museums revealed evidence that, although they did not fly, they were “exceptionally powerful” and “efficient climbers”.
“Evidence from bone specimens shows that the dodo's tendons covering its fingers were exceptionally powerful, similar to how birds climb and run today,” says biologist Neil Goestling. “These creatures were perfectly adapted to their environment” and are best remembered as “a reminder of humanity's destructive power towards the natural world”.
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