When it was still alive, the dodo bird lived a solitary existence on the island habitat of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean about 500 miles directly east of Madagascar. See all of our entertaining and insightful animal articles. News: $15m Raised To Resurrect The Woolly Mammoth Using New CRISPR Technology.10 Birds with the Most Colorful Feathers.How an Extinct Bird Re-Evolved Itself from the Dead.Discover the 7 Amazing 9-Letter Countries in the World.Mauritius is the only known location where dodos ever lived. Regardless of its origin, the word dodo had already entered the English language by the early 1600s. Another potential source is the Portuguese word for crazy, fool, or simpleton. It might have come from the Dutch words for sluggard (the Dutch also referred to it as a wallowbird). The origin of the word dodo is unclear.Even though the dodo acquired a reputation for clumsiness, studies of its anatomy suggest that it was actually capable of running at fast speeds.It is believed that the character was a stand-in for Lewis Carroll himself. In the book, the dodo starts a kind of free-for-all race where everyone is a winner by design. The dodo bird became quite popular all around the world after it appeared as a minor character in chapters two and three of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

©Dutch School, 17th Century – Public Domain An Amazing Bird: 3 Dodo FactsĪrtist depictions of the dodo differ greatly. A few specimens were brought back to Europe, which inadvertently helped to preserve the bones and soft tissue for study. Most of what we know about the dodo comes from contemporary accounts and modern studies of its anatomy. After years of merciless hunting by humans and introduced species, the dodo went extinct by around 1688. If anything doomed the dodo, it was an unfortunate victim of circumstance. First discovered in 1598 by European sailors, the large, flightless dodo has since become a sort of byword for clumsiness and backwardness.ĭodos may have become synonymous with stupidity in pop culture, but these birds adapted and survived over millions of years in the relatively harsh environment of Mauritius.

Dodo bird extinct from own poo