Product Description
Keep the memory of the DODO alive when you own our realistic beautifully-crafted STUFFED DODO BIRD plush toy. It so soft and cuddly and desires your affection and protection.
The dodo, a flightless bird about 3 feet (or 1 meter) tall, was found in only one place in the world - the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. It fed on fruit. The name of this bird is often equated with the condition of extinction - "extinct like the dodo," "dead as a dodo," "gone the way of the dodo bird." Within two hundred years of the arrival of Portuguese sailors on Mauritius in the 1500s, the dodo had become exterminated forever. The bird was last recorded alive in 1663. The starving sailors found the large dodo birds easy prey, as they were not afraid of humans and have been described as "clumsy." In fact, the name "dodo" comes from the word for "fool" in Portuguese. There is some disagreement over how much of the dodo's demise can be blamed directly on human consumption or whether it was the dogs, cats, rats, and pigs introduced to the island that destroyed their eggs. Both played a role. A number of dodos had been brought to Europe before their extinction, where they were variously drawn, painted, and stuffed. Like the bird itself, the dodo's remains, it seems, had also "gone missing," as no complete skeleton had been found for hundreds of years until the discovery by Dutch scientists of a dodo "mass grave" in 2005. Even a complete taxidermied dodo can no longer be seen, as the last surviving one in Oxford was seriously damaged. However, in recent years a slimmer replica has been made based on new data about the proportions of the bird. The dodo gained its place as the most famous extinct animal partly because of its appearance in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The dodo was a favorite of the author, "Lewis Carroll," whose real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. It is said that he stuttered, and often pronounced his name "Do-Do-Dodgson." The dodo bird (Raphus cucullatus) was related to pigeons and doves and stood about 3 feet tall. It had small wings, which were unable to fly its 40 pound body. The dodo bird has become a well-known symbol for a recent extinct species. It is hard to say whether one particular factor caused the dodo's extinction. Dutch and Portuguese sailors visited the island in the 17th century. These birds were slow and friendly and showed little fear of people. They had a reputation for having tough meat and an acrid taste and were allegedly hardly hunted. Some people treasured the dodo's plumage so some birds were killed to adorn costumes. Most likely dodos became prey to the cats, dogs, pigs and macaques which arrived with the sailors. They were either killed by them or their nests and forests were so disturbed, that they were unable to propagate. The last remaining dodo's existence was confirmed in 1685, but a well-preserved skeleton was excavated in 2007, giving us much needed information about this strange, and now, sadly extinct, bird.