If there's one thing most people know about the dodo bird, it's that they were dumb. If they had been human, they would have been the kind of person who changes pants while driving. Yes, legend has it, this creature was only really ever a danger to itself, a true poster child for The Darwin Awards...at least, that's the story we've been fed. But is it true?
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00If there's one thing most people know about the dodo bird, it's that they were dumb.
00:04If they had been human, they would have been the kind of person who'd change his pants
00:08while driving.
00:09Yes, legend has it, this creature was only really ever a danger to itself, a true poster
00:15child for the Darwin Awards.
00:17At least, that's the story we've been fed.
00:19But is it true?
00:20Turns out, the whole story that the dumb dodo got itself hunted to extinction by being so
00:25stupid may have been a big load of doo-doo.
00:27Léon Klaassen, professor of vertebrae paleontology and evolution at Netherlands' Maastricht University,
00:34believes the Dutch sailors who first encountered the bird in 1598 didn't actually hunt the
00:39birds to extinction, though the sailors likely had an indirect role in the demise of the
00:43species.
00:44Previously, it was believed the birds were fat and were hunted for food.
00:48But in the dense jungles of their native Mauritius, the bird would have been much leaner than
00:53previously thought, and therefore not as appetizing of a meal.
00:57Further, these jungles would have also made it much harder for the few hundred sailors
01:01to catch the birds, regardless of how unafraid the dodos were of human beings.
01:06Klaassen believes the real problem was the rats and other animals that would have landed
01:10with the sailors.
01:12These animals would have been able to multiply quickly in an unrestricted habitat, and would
01:16have feasted on dodo eggs and outcompeted them for food, a double-extinction whammy.
01:21And then the triple whammy hit, rapid habitat loss.
01:25The island of Mauritius was not initially considered very valuable, just a place for
01:29ships to stop over.
01:31Some even thought the island was cursed due to a large amount of shipwrecks in the area.
01:35That all changed when the Dutch realized they could export the island's ebony wood for sale,
01:40which became the island's primary economic activity.
01:43Not long after, settlers were turning the once-wild island into a big agricultural plantation,
01:49leading to heavy deforestation and loss of native plant species.
01:53The forests that provided natural protection for the dodo bird gave way to sugarcane fields,
01:58making the birds oversized, sitting ducks for any predator who came along, as the dodos
02:03literally had no fight-or-flight reflex.
02:06Lack of flight also made dodos ill-suited to surviving natural disasters.
02:11Evidence has been found that even before human settlement, many of the birds died in flash
02:15floods brought on by cyclones.
02:18Once they lost the natural protection of their sheltered forests, they became even more vulnerable.
02:23The entry for dodo in the Oxford English Dictionary describes something that is no longer effective,
02:28valid, or interesting, and the origin of the word comes from the Portuguese dodo, translating
02:34to simpleton.
02:36It's a sad legacy for what was once a beautiful, totally innocent creature.
02:40Beyond their reputation for stupidity, dodos are a symbol of how quickly and profoundly
02:45humans can impact an environment and drive a species to extinction.
02:49Until we can clone them, dodos are gone forever, and the best thing we can do about it is to
02:54learn from the mistakes of our ancestors.
02:56It only took 100 years to wipe out the dodo, and while exact dates of extinction vary,
03:01most believe the dodo was gone by the 1660s, with other reports claiming they lasted on
03:06nearby islands until the 1690s.
03:08In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter much, because either way the bird,
03:13and just about every trace of it, is gone forever.
03:16All we've got are a few records and sketches from sailors, and one or two shoddily stuffed
03:20birds in museums.
03:22We're hardly even sure what color they were.
03:24Most paintings from the time show dodos with white feathers, but firsthand accounts describe
03:29them with gray-to-black plumage.
03:31Heck, we didn't even know they had kneecaps until 2014, after a 3D scan of the last remaining
03:37skeleton revealed them.
03:39So have we learned our lesson?
03:41Not yet, it seems.
03:42In another 100 years, it's estimated that 25 percent of all bird species will be extinct
03:46in the wild unless we take big steps to clean up our act.
03:50If not, we'll be the real dodos.