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If you’ve ever heard the phrase ‘as dead as a dodo,’ it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the dodo is, in fact, exactly that – dead.
Entirely extinct, that is. With no one but humans to blame.
That’s because this magnificent bird, which was endemic to Mauritius and had no natural predators until us pesky humans came along, was living its best life in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
But then, in 1598, Dutch sailors arrived in Mauritius – and within 100 years, this beautiful bird was extinct.
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How did this all happen so fast? Well, according to an article by the Natural History Museum, the sailors who took up residence on the island hunted the birds – and since dodos hadn’t encountered predators before, they didn’t know to be scared. But that wasn’t the end of our species’ reckless behavior:
“The Dutch sailors started to hunt the dodos and solitaires, which, due to their isolation, were unafraid of them. This massively reduced these birds’ numbers, but it was the menagerie of creatures that the sailors brought with them – including dogs, cats, pigs and rats – that sealed the birds’ fate. These introduced animals not only killed the birds, but likely ate their eggs too. Within just a hundred years, the dodo, the solitaire and many of the other species that gathered in the island swamps were extinct.”
But wait – why were the sailors hunting the dodos anyway? Wasn’t their meat supposed to be disgusting?
Well, that’s the line that has been steadfast in popular belief for a long time, leading many to wonder why sailors were so keen to hunt and kill the majestic birds. But according to a 2009 study, this couldn’t be further from the truth.
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As researcher Jan Den Hengst explains in the study, our general understanding of the dodo bird – including what its meat tasted like – comes from Dutch sources which have, in some cases, been inaccurately translated.
For the dodo, Den Hengst believes that the miscommunication about the taste of the bird’s meat comes from a mistranslation of the words de walgch. Translating as ‘the heaves’, you might immediately think this was a flavor that would make you violently ill, when in fact, Den Hengst clarifies, the implication is of eating so much of something that it makes you feel sick:
“It is generally accepted that the meat of the extinct dodo was not a great culinary success. The bird even acquired the name of wallowbird for making the consumers sick. It appears that this reputation came from only one source. Other chroniclers were a lot milder in their assessment of dodo meat and independently reported a delicious meal with a very good flavour. Everything left over was salted down, as they could not eat all the 50 dodos that were brought on board. The taste of the dodo has to be reconsidered.”
It makes a lot more sense that sailors would hunt a bird to extinction when it tasted good, rather than making them heave.
If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about the mysterious “pyramids” discovered in Antarctica. What are they?