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The Dodo was a large, flightless bird (about a meter tall) that lived only on the island of Mauritius. Not much is known about the Dodo, records from the time are not very complete, and many conflict with each other. The last Dodo sighting was in 1662, and it wasn’t until (relatively) recently that study of the bird has begun. All modern knowledge of the Dodo has been acquired from ship’s logs, and what could be pieced together from the bones that remain. The accounts given by sailors of the Dodo’s appearance are wildly contradictory, ranging from “no feathers at all”, to “covered in a layer of downy plumage”, but recent research suggests that these descriptions are all correct, and only describe the Dodo at different stages of its molting cycle.

If you’ve ever heard of the Dodo described as a fat, clumsy bird, you’ve been fed a common misconception: this description refers to the Dodos kept in captivity, that grew fat and clumsy from a poor diet and a lack of exercise. A similar misconception is that the Dodo was hunted to extinction, due to its lack of mistrust towards humans. Humans are the leading factors for the bird’s extinction, just in a less direct way. The Dodo did not have any natural predators on Mauritius, but with the arrival of European sailors came rats, cats, pigs, and dogs, which ate both the Dodo and its eggs.