The Dodo Bird
The Dodo Bird
This unusual bird got its name from being so clumsy. It is a lazy bird, as well as dumb. Interesting facts come up when you look at this awkward bird’s appearance, environment, and behavior.
The Dodo bird is the silliest looking bird that ever walked the earth. This odd looking bird has gray bare skin on its face and warm golden piercing eyes. The Dodo had stout yellow legs that only had four toes. Three of the toes face forward and one faces backward like a thumb. The Dodo is a little bigger than a turkey, weighing about fifty pounds (23 kg). Their plumage is largely ashy-blue-gray.
This unique, extinct bird lived on the islands of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. The island is east of Madagascar, which is near the equator. This unique bird inhabited the island for thousands of years. This island is a tropical deciduous, savanna, and grasslands .The Dodo bird lived on islands although it was a forest dwelling bird. Mauritius has a variety of biomes that contain plains, small mountains, forests, reefs, and a shore. The Dodo bird enjoyed this because it was surrounded by all its various foods.
The Dodo bird was a docile animal. It ate fruit from the trees and fish from the ocean. However, it also ate metal and rocks to help it digest better. They dug under ground to get the metal. The rocks were found around the island which was easily found by the exotic birds. The Dodo bird was threatened by few predators on the island. Even if it tried to get away, its stomach often bumped on the ground slowing itself down.
A scientific name for the Dodo is Raphus Cucullatus. People came to the island of the Dodos and saw these silly birds, so they called them Dodos. The Dodo is a flightless bird because it was too stout to fly! It couldn’t even run without bumping its stomach. This made it easy for people who came to the island to catch them. They thought it looked delicious, so they hunted the birds and ate them until they became extinct, in 1681.
From looking at this lazy bird you can understand why it became extinct. Studying its bizarre appearance, dangerous environment, and clumsy behavior, we learn more about how it became extinct.
by Robert
picture from Wikipedia