Talk:Dodo
From Academic Kids
- It was discovered that the dodos ate the seeds of the tree, and only by passing through the digestive tract of the dodo did the seeds become active and start to grow.
How was this discovered? I'm not saying I don't believe it, I'm just saying I think it would be interesting trivia.
Perhaps I should have written "deduced" or something like that. The web site where I found the information didn't specify, either. --Pinkunicorn
I just did a quick google and the first site I found mentioned that the dodo was used extensively by the Portuguese for meat. http://www.bagheera.com/inthewild/ext_dodobird.htm Which is correct. At the same time, I would not be surprised if the article above was the source of information for our own article, so the discrepancy is especially interesting. Danny I was pretty sure that dodos were eaten... I'm SURE that's what we learnt in school! I'll see what I can find... KJ
- I've removed the bit about dodos not being used for food, they obviously were. --Scipius 23:20 Jan 3, 2003 (UTC)
-They were not, they tried to at first but found it very horrible, recent reseacrh has shown that they were not. A program on TV a few years ago showed they were not. -fonzy
-fonzy, what was the title of the program? It is difficult to trust a source which can't be viewed. I also saw a program on PBS recently and it claimed the birds were often and easily hunted for food. TV isn't always right: the same program also claimed the Calvaria tree was going extinct, which I have since learned is untrue.
Does anyone know how tall the Dodo was known to grow?
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specimens
There are no museum specimens of the dodo still extant today. I presume this is to mean specimens from an original, live dodo, correct? Dysprosia 12:30, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
- That's right, there are no stuffed birds, so the images of the Dodo are from paintings, not corpses. The last stuffed Dodo was burned because it was getting a bit smelly! jimfbleak 14:15, 1 Feb 2004 (UTC)
I've got a photo of a 19th century model of a dodo at User:Imran/photos if anyone wants to include it. --Imran 02:24, 16 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Extinction date
The two paragraphs beginning "There is some controversy.." and "The last known dodo..." are mutually contradictory. Can anyone provide references for the second paragraph?
Linnaeus' naming
When Linnaeus assigned a genus and species to the Dodo, was that the first genus and species given to an an extinct animal? --Wetman 09:38, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Calvaria Tree
The discussion of the Calvaria tree is pretty isolated in the article -- easy to miss since I couldn't remember the name though it is something that I often hear about in association with the Dodo. Maybe it should go in its own section instead of "Family Raphidae". Actually, now that I say that it doesn't make much sense where it is now since it has little to do with the family of the species. The paragraph which discusses it over uses the verb "discover". It seems likely that many of the uses are suboptimal (maybe "theorized", "proposed", or "deduced" would be good alternatives). In any case, this page:
http://home.conceptsfa.nl/~pmaas/rea/dodobird.htm
(see the section titled "Food") claims that the theory that the birds were needed for the seeds has been disproven, though it doesn't offer a lot of evidence to back up the assertion.
Also, that site has a lot of other Dodo pictures, a picture of the tree, and the burned head of the last stuffed bird.
