50 Fun Facts About Dodo

The dodo's home island of Mauritius lies in which body of water?

It sits east of Madagascar; a 'white dodo' once believed to live on nearby Réunion was really a confused memory of an ibis.

The dodo belonged to which family of birds?

Early scientists variously called it a small ostrich, a rail, an albatross or a vulture before the pigeon idea won out.

What is the dodo's closest living relative?

DNA from the Oxford specimen placed it nearest that Southeast Asian bird, then the crowned pigeons of New Guinea.

The dodo's closest relative of all, also extinct and flightless, was which bird?

Together they formed the subtribe Raphina, created in 2024 just for the two of them.

How tall was a dodo?

Estimates of its weight in the wild run from about 10 to 17 kg; captive birds painted in Europe were probably overfed.

What did the dodo swallow to help digest its food?

A showman in 1638 fed his dodo pebbles 'as big as nutmegs' and swore she coughed them all up again.

How many eggs did a dodo clutch reportedly contain?

That fits its pigeon ancestry; a 1651 account says the white egg was 'the size of a halfpenny roll'.

Why is the dodo presumed to have become flightless?

With no mammals to compete with or flee from, size went up and wings shrank; the same happened to the solitaire on Rodrigues.

Who made the first recorded mention of the dodo, and when?

The Portuguese had visited Mauritius between 1507 and 1513 but left no record of the bird.

The last widely accepted sighting of a dodo was in which year?

A 1681 account long held the title, but it is now thought to describe the red rail; the bird was surely gone by 1700.

The only surviving soft tissue of a dodo is a dried head and what?

They belonged to the last stuffed dodo, listed in the Tradescant collection in 1656 and moved to the Ashmolean in 1659.

Most subfossil dodo bones have come from which site on Mauritius?

Animals apparently got mired there reaching for water in a severe drought around 4,200 years ago.

Danish zoologist Johannes Reinhardt was ridiculed in 1842 for proposing the dodo was what?

Strickland and Melville's 1848 monograph The Dodo and Its Kindred backed him up after dissecting the Oxford head and foot.

Beth Shapiro's 2002 dodo DNA study dated the split between dodo and solitaire ancestors to about when?

The Mascarene islands are under 10 million years old, so those ancestors must have kept flying for a long while afterwards.

The Dutch name 'Walghvoghel', first used for the dodo in 1598, means what?

Sailors preferred the pigeons and parrots once they had eaten enough dodo, and the name stuck.

The word 'dodo' most probably comes from Dutch 'Dodaars', which means what?

It refers to the knot of feathers on the bird's rear; the rival Portuguese 'doudo' (fool) theory is doubted, since the Portuguese never mentioned the bird.

Who was first to use the word 'dodo' in print, in a 1634 travelogue?

He claimed the Portuguese used the name; Altham had written it in a private letter six years earlier.

Linnaeus first classified the dodo in which genus, in the 10th edition of Systema Naturae?

He later coined Didus ineptus, 'inept dodo', in 1766; Brisson's Raphus of 1760 has priority.

The dodo's Latin species name cucullatus means what?

Spanish Jesuit Juan Eusebio Nieremberg first used it in 1635, as Cygnus cucullatus, the 'hooded swan'.

Which Dutch painter was the most prolific illustrator of the dodo, with at least twelve depictions?

He often tucked it into a lower corner; his 'Edwards's Dodo' hung beside the dried foot at the British Museum until the 1840s.

A 17th-century painting attributed to Ustad Mansur probably shows a dodo in whose menagerie?

Peter Mundy also claimed to see two dodos in Surat between 1628 and 1633; the slim brown bird is considered one of the most accurate images.

Which Dutch ship's journal holds the only known sketches of live dodos drawn on Mauritius?

The 1601-1603 journal was only rediscovered in the 1860s; its crew called the bird 'Dronte', meaning 'swollen'.

Hamon L'Estrange saw a live dodo in 1638 in which city?

He was lured in by a picture hung on a cloth in the street; it is the only account that clearly describes a live dodo in Europe.

At least how many transported dodos are inferred to have reached their destinations alive?

Julian Hume pieced the number together from accounts, paintings and specimens; one went to Emperor Rudolf II's menagerie in Prague.

Which introduced animals are now thought to have harmed the dodo more than hunting did?

The 17th-century human population never topped 50, but their livestock and crab-eating macaques raided nests and ate the food.

Sailors who hunted dodos for food especially prized which part?

Some killed the birds only for that organ, considered the tastiest bit.

Which bird do researchers think later accounts of 'dodos' on Mauritius actually describe?

Alfred Newton suggested in 1868 that the name simply moved to the rail after the real dodo vanished.

Scans in 2018 revealed what inside the Oxford dodo's head?

So the bird was shot, either before it left Mauritius or after it reached Britain.

Many sources say the Ashmolean Museum did what to its decayed stuffed dodo around 1755?

The rescued head and foot are the same ones Strickland and Melville dissected a century later.

Who found an abundance of subfossil dodo bones in the Mare aux Songes in 1865, after a 30-year search?

Owen then bought a shipment of bones meant for Newton, sparking a rivalry over who would describe the skeleton first.

Which two men wanted to be first to describe the dodo's post-cranial anatomy, leading to a rivalry?

Owen simply bought the shipment of bones that had been meant for Newton.

In which 1865 book does the dodo appear as a character?

The same year George Clark began publishing on the freshly dug-up bones, which helped rehabilitate a bird some had dismissed as a myth.

Lewis Carroll is thought to have identified with the dodo because of what?

He would introduce himself as 'Do-do-dodgson'; he and Alice Liddell liked visiting the dodo remains at the Oxford museum.

Which tree was claimed in 1973 to be dying out because its seeds needed to pass through a dodo?

Stanley Temple's 'dodo tree' hypothesis was later discredited: the tree has germinated since and numbers several hundred, not thirteen.

Besides the coat of arms and coins of Mauritius, the dodo appears as a watermark on what?

It is even printed as the background of the immigration form visitors fill in.

A smiling dodo is the emblem of Brasseries de Bourbon, a brewer on which island?

Fittingly, it shows the white dodo that was once wrongly believed to have lived there.

What is the Center for Biological Diversity's annual prize for wrecking wild places called?

The dodo is also used by the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust to promote species protection.

A previously unpublished 17th-century Dutch dodo illustration sold at Christie's in 2009 for how much?

It had been expected to fetch about £6,000; the artist is unknown and the legs look dried, suggesting a stuffed model.

Which poet included a verse about the dodo in his 1896 Bad Child's Book of Beasts?

'Dodo' had by then also become slang for a dull-witted person, on the belief the bird was stupid and easily caught.

A dodo egg claimed to be genuine is stored in a museum in which South African city?

Donated by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer of coelacanth fame, it may actually be an aberrant ostrich egg.

What was found in the Oxford dodo's few remaining feathers?

That is, proper vaned feathers rather than fluff, matching its pigeon relatives.

Besides Oxford, 17th-century dodo remains survive in Prague and which other city?

It holds a skull and Prague an upper jaw; a foot once in the British Museum has been lost.

A dodo sent to Emperor Rudolf II's menagerie was valued as equal to a white deer and what?

The bird was painted in a 1610 collection of the Prague menagerie's animals.

The Dutch renamed Mauritius after which nobleman when they took it in 1598?

The Dutch East India Company used the island to provision ships and left in 1710, by which time the dodo was long gone.

Which large flightless bird, described in 2001 from Fiji, was only slightly smaller than the dodo?

It too is thought to be related to the crowned pigeons; island life kept producing big ground pigeons.

According to most representations, what colour was the dodo's naked head?

The beak was shown as green, black and yellow, and the stout legs as yellowish with black claws.

Where is Roelant Savery's 1626 painting known as Edwards's Dodo housed?

Named for the ornithologist George Edwards who once owned it, the picture of a particularly fat bird became the standard image of the dodo.

A 2016 study based on CT scans of composite skeletons put the dodo's weight in what range?

Earlier estimates ran as high as 21 kg for males, but many European depictions are now thought to show overfed captive birds.

In which museum was the Mughal painting of a dodo attributed to Ustad Mansur rediscovered in 1955?

It shows a slimmer, brownish bird among accurately coloured Indian birds, and is regarded as one of the most faithful images of a living dodo.

To which professional artist are the Gelderland journal's dodo sketches attributed?

He also drew other now-extinct Mauritian birds; a second, less refined hand contributed further sketches to the journal.