DODO
When was it declared extinct?
The dodo is thought to have become extinct in 1681, but any records of it after the 1660s must be treated with caution.
Where did it spend its time?
The dodo was discovered only on the island of Mauritius, 900 kilometers east of Madagascar.
(Dodo—Despite being one of the most well-known recently extinct animals, very few dodo remains exist today.)
"As extinct as the dodo!" This phrase has become synonymous with extinction. When we think of extinction, the dodo is the first animal that comes to mind. The dodo, which was frequently portrayed as a stupid, bumbling giant of a bird, was actually a very interesting animal that was perfectly adapted to its island habitat. Unfortunately, its evolutionary path did not include humans, so when we discovered these birds, they did not live long.
We don't know what the dodo looked like because there are no complete skin specimens, but we do know it was a large bird, about the size of a large turkey, with a stout build, sturdy legs, a thick neck, and a large head. Fully grown specimens weighed around 25 kg and stood up to 1 m tall. The dodo's most distinguishing feature was its enormous beak (up to 23 cm long), complete with a bulbous, hooked tip. Because the dodo evolved on an island with no predators, fl ight was an expensive waste of energy; instead, it ambled around on the forest floor of its Mauritian home. The only information we have on what the dodo ate comes from the accounts of sailors who stopped on the island of Mauritius and witnessed the bird going about its daily business. The dodo's preferred food was probably the seeds of various Mauritian forest trees, but when those became scarce during the dry season, it may have resorted to eating whatever it could find. A preference for seeds is consistent with other observations of the dodo's behavior, which indicate that it ate stones. These stones got into the dodo's crop, which is like a big, muscular bag, and helped grind the hard-shelled seeds.
Because the dodo couldn't fly, it had to make its nest on the ground. These nests were described by sailors as a bed of grass on which a single egg was laid. The female incubated the egg and cared for the young when it hatched. Sailors who saw the living birds reported that the young dodo made a call similar to that of a young goose. Apart from a few tidbits of information, we know very little about the dodo's behavior. We don't know if they lived in groups or how the adults interacted during breeding season. We do know that they were completely unprepared to deal with human disturbance.
Although Arab voyagers and Europeans had discovered Mauritius many years before and had undoubtedly seen its unique animals, the dodo was first described in 1598. The large dodo piqued the interest of hungry seafarers who had not eaten fresh meat for many months while at sea; however, the dodo's flesh was far from flavorsome. Even the unpleasant taste of the dodo's tough flesh did not deter people from slaughtering them for food, often in large numbers, and any birds that could not be eaten immediately were salted and stored on the ship for the remainder of the voyage. It was said that hunting the dodo was a simple task. It couldn't fly or even run fast, and it had the unfortunate misfortune of being completely unafraid of humans. Dodos had never seen a human, so they had never learned to be afraid. They were said to waddle up to a club-wielding sailor only to be dispatched with a single swift swipe. They would use their powerful beak to good effect and deliver a painful nip in the rare case that they felt threatened.
Hunting clearly had a negative impact on the dodos—their size and small clutches indicate that they were long-lived, slow-breeding birds, which was not a problem in the absence of predators, but once humans and their associated animals entered the picture, extinction was unavoidable. Seafarers who visited Mauritius brought a zoo of animals with them, including dogs, pigs, rats, cats, and even monkeys. These creatures disturbed the nesting dodos and ate the solitary eggs. The dodo was doomed by this combination of hunting, nest disturbance, and egg predation. It has been proposed that flash flooding may have pushed the dodo population, which had already been decimated by hunting, nest disturbance, and egg predation, to the brink of extinction. Regardless of the causes, the enigmatic dodo was wiped out just over 100 years after Europeans first discovered it.
• The dodo belongs to the same family of birds as doves and pigeons. Its ancestor was most likely a pigeon-like bird that landed on the island of Mauritius and evolved into a large, flightless species over time.
• The last known record of the dodo is that of an English sailor, Benjamin Harry, who visited the island in 1681. This and other late records of the dodo are thought to refer to another extinct Mauritian bird known as the "red hen." Historically, the name of an extinct animal was frequently transferred to another species living in the same location.
• Rodrigues Island, located 560 kilometers east of Mauritius, once housed another species of large, flightless bird. The Rodrigues solitaire was first recorded in 1691, but by the 1760s, at the very latest, it had gone the way of its relative, the dodo. Réunion Island, also part of the Mauritius group, was thought to be home to a completely white dodo known as the "Réunion solitaire," but it has now been determined that this bird was actually an ibis, not a dodo. Unfortunately, this bird is also extinct. Albino dodos were spotted on Mauritius, adding to the mystery surrounding the identity of the Réunion solitaire.
• Despite the fact that the dodo is a well-known extinct animal, there are surprisingly few remains of it in museums. There are a few complete skeletons, a few broken bones, and a head and foot with tissue still attached. The foot and head were taken from the last stuffed specimen on display at the Oxford Ashmolean Museum. By 1755, the specimen had apparently deteriorated to the point where the curator ordered its destruction. The burning was, in fact, a desperate attempt by museum workers to salvage what they could from a badly disintegrating specimen, leaving us with the remnants we have today.
• Because of their isolation in the Indian Ocean, Mauritius and its neighbouring islands were home to many species of unique animals prior to the arrival of Europeans and the destructive animals they brought with them. We have a good idea of what the dodo and Rodrigues solitaire looked like, but not of many of the other animals with which these birds shared their habitat. We now know that these islands were home to a variety of flightless and flying birds, bats, giant tortoises, and even snakes, all of which are now extinct. There is very little information available on these animals.
AUROCHS
When was it declared extinct?
The last aurochs was discovered in 1627.
Where did it spend its time?
The aurochs was found in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with subspecies found in North Africa and India.
(The aurochs was the ancestor of most modern cattle, though it was much larger than most modern breeds. Male and female figures appear prominently in ancient cave art. Aurochs—This old drawing by an unknown artist clearly shows the aurochs' distinctive horns.)
The vast majority of modern cattle breeds are descended from the massive prehistoric cattle known as aurochs. For thousands of years, these large animals roamed the woods and glades of Europe and Asia, until the last of the species, a female, died in Poland in 1627.
Because the aurochs only recently vanished, there are numerous accounts of what it looked like and how it behaved. The males were enormous—1.8 m at the shoulder and 900 kg—significantly larger than the majority of cattle breeds we have today. Both males and females had impressive horns that curved forward and slightly inward, and the male, in particular, appeared to be a typical but powerfully built bull. Unlike modern cattle breeds, the male and female aurochs were different colors. A bull was described as black with a pale stripe down his spine, whereas a female was described as more reddish brown.
Aurochs, according to historical accounts, lived in family groups of females, calves, and young bulls. The bulls formed their own groups as they grew older, and the large, mature bulls were solitary, only mixing with others of their kind during breeding season. During the harsh winter months, the aurochs, like other types of cattle, were completely herbivorous and lived on a diet of grasses, leaves, fruits such as acorns, and even the bark of trees and bushes.
The aurochs, particularly the bulls, were said to be aggressive and difficult to domesticate, but about 9,000 years ago in the Middle East, early humans did just that, giving us many of the cattle breeds we have today. A large animal with an aggressive personality would have been difficult to care for, so our forefathers selectively bred these animals to make them more docile. Selective breeding was also used to create cattle that could produce a large amount of milk. The female aurochs' udders were much smaller than the capacious glands between a modern cow's back legs.
Apart from the aurochs, humans domesticated many other animals, and it was the transition from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to an agricultural one that marked the end of the aurochs.
Humans have altered the aurochs' habitats over centuries and millennia. They clear the forests to plant crops or to allow their domesticated animals to graze and browse. They chose areas with the richest soils for their first agricultural attempts: river deltas, valleys, and fertile wooded plains. These were the aurochs' natural habitats, and they were forced to live in areas where the food was possibly less nutritious. These animals' large size and intimidating temperament made them popular hunting targets for food and sport. The loss of habitat, competition with domesticated relatives, and hunting all contributed to the aurochs' extinction. The last known aurochs lived in the Wiskitki and Jaktorów forests in 1476, both of which are located in modern-day Poland. The Duke of Mazovia owned the last two populations of aurochs, and because they were popular hunting animals, they eventually received royal protection, making it illegal for anyone other than a member of the royal household to kill an aurochs. Unfortunately, what is now Poland experienced turbulent times, with many kings coming and going in a relatively short period of time. During this time, the aurochs' protection was much less of a priority, and the last two populations dwindled. Neglect and hunting are both activities. Aurochs were only found in Jaktorów Forest as of 1602, according to records, and a royal decree was issued in 1604 to protect the remaining individuals. It was too little, too late, and by 1627, the species had become extinct—the bellow of an aurochs bull would no longer be heard in the forests of central Europe.
• The aurochs' ancestors are thought to have evolved in India 1.5 to 2 million years ago, after which they spread throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. The earth was going through ice ages and intervening warm periods for much of their existence, and because the aurochs were not adapted to survive in extremely cold environments, their range probably expanded as the ice sheets withdrew and contracted as the ice sheets extended south.
• Because the aurochs died before photography was invented, we have no photographs, and despite the fact that this was once a very common animal, there aren't many complete skeletons in museums around the world. The aurochs image lives on in cave paintings, and the La Mairie cave paintings (Dordogne, France), which date back around 15,000 years, depict a bull aurochs with two females.
• In the 1920s, two German zoologists speculated that by selectively breeding modern cattle for aurochs traits, the aurochs could be effectively brought back from the dead. Their experiments quickly produced cattle with strong resemblances to aurochs. These animals, known as Heck cattle, do share some characteristics with the aurochs, but they can only ever be a close approximation of the extinct animal and an interesting experiment in selective breeding.
• Some animal breeders and zoologists believe that the Spanish fighting bulls have many aurochs-like characteristics and thus may be the closest living relatives of these extinct beasts.
• There is an ongoing, heated debate about how Europe looked after the last ice age ended. According to one group of scientists, Europe was once covered in dense forest until humans arrived and began chopping it all down. Another school of thought holds that large animals, such as aurochs, opened up and maintained large glades and paths within the forest by feeding and trampling. The last remnant of this European wildwood is Biaowiea Forest, a World Heritage Site and biosphere reserve on the border between Poland and Belarus.
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