Mauritius Dodo aka Dodo
(Columbidae - Please see also Doves)
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The Mauritius Dodo (Raphus cucullatus, called Didus ineptus by Linnaeus), more commonly just dodo, was a metre-high (approximately equal to 3.28 feet) flightless bird of the island of Mauritius. The dodo, which is now extinct, lived on fruit and nested on the ground.
Taxonomy and evolution
As a close relative of the modern pigeon and dove, the dodo lives in Australlia Italic textnearest living relative is the Caloenas nicobarica from the Nicobar Islands. DNA analysis suggests the dodo evolved away from the Solitaires 25 million years ago, before Mauritius was an island, reaching its impressive size as a result of the Island Effect following the subsequent isolation of Mauritius
Morphology and flight
In October 2005, an important site of dodo remains was found by Dutch researchers in Mauritius, including birds of various stages of maturity. These findings were made public in December 2005 in the Naturalis in Leiden. Before this find, few dodo specimens were known. Dublin's Natural History Museum had an assembled specimen, while the most intact remains from a single bird are a skeletal foot and a head, which contains the only known soft tissue remains of the species.
The decaying remnants of the last complete stuffed dodo, in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, was ordered to be burned by the museum's director in 1755; the foot and head were salvaged from this specimen, and are currently on display. Nevertheless, from artists' renditions we know that the Dodo had blue-grey plumage, a 23-centimetre (9-inch) blackish hooked bill with a reddish point, very small wings, stout yellow legs, and a tuft of curly feathers high on its rear end. Dodos were very large birds, weighing about 23 kg (50 pounds). The breast structure was insufficient to have ever supported flight. These ground-bound birds evolved to take advantage of an island ecology with no predators.
The traditional image of the dodo is of a fat, clumsy bird, but this view has been challenged by Andrew Kitchener, a biologist at the Royal Museum of Scotland (reported in National Geographic News, February 2002), who believes that the old drawings showed overfed captive specimens. As Mauritius has marked dry and wet seasons, the dodo probably fattened itself on ripe fruits at the end of the wet season to live through the dry season where food was scarce; contemporary reports speak of the birds' "greedy" appetite. Thus, in captivity with food readily available, the birds would become overfed very easily. It had lived for thousands of years on Mauritius without any predators, being the largest animal then on the island (Mauritius had no native inhabitants).
Copyright: Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from Wikipedia.org
Related Web Resources: Extinct Dodo Related to Pigeons, DNA Shows - Hillary Mayell for National Geographic News ... Dead as a Dodo by David Staley
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