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There are no intact museum specimens of the Dodo extant today. The last stuffed Dodo, in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, was burned in 1755.

Nevertheless, from artists' renditions we know that the dodo had blue-grey plumage, a 23-centimetre (9-inch) blackish hooked bill with reddish point, very small useless wingFor some other uses of the word "wing" please see Wing (disambiguation . Laughing Gull on the beach in Atlantic City. Birds' bones are hollow, to cut down on weight and allow flight A wing is a surface used to produce an aerodynamic force normal to the dis, stout yellow legs, and a tuft of curly featherA feather is one of the epidermal growths that forms the distinctive outer covering, or plumage on a bird. They are the outstanding character that distinguishes the Class Aves from all others. Animal origins Feathers are the most complicated integumentarys high on its rear end. Dodos were very large birds, weighing about 23 kg (50 pounds).

The breast structure was insufficient to have ever supported flight and it is believed these ground-bound birds evolved to take advantage of an island ecologyEcology is the branch of science that studies the distribution and abundance of living organisms, and the interactions between organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes both its physical habitat, which can be described as th with no enemies.

The traditional image of the dodo is of a fat, clumsy bird, but this view has been challenged by Andrew Kitchener, a biologist at the Royal Museum of ScotlandThe Royal Museum of Scotland is a museum on Chambers Street, in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is part of the National Museums of Scotland. Admission, other than for special temporary exhibitions, is free. Collections The museum contains artefacts from around th (reported in National Geographic News, February 2002), who believes that the old drawings showed overfed captive specimens.

The Dodo was entirely fearless of people, and this, in combination with its flightlessness, made it easy prey. The name dodo comes from the archaic PortuguesePortuguese portugues is a Romance language predominantly spoken in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and East Timor. With more than 200 million native speakers, Portuguese is one of the few languages spoken in such widely-distributed parts word doudo, meaning "simpleton". (The island was first visited by the PortugueseRepublica Portuguesa ( In Detail) National motto: None Official language Portuguese 3 Capital Lisbon President Jorge Sampaio Prime Minister Pedro Santana Lopes Area Total % water World ranking: 109th 92,391 km²0. 5 % Population Total ( 2004) Density World in 1505Events Christ's College, Cambridge founded. Vasili III succeeds Ivan III as Grand Prince of Muscovy. Idiosa III of Chardonnay murdered. Arabs reach Comoros. Births John Knox Thomas Tallis Deaths Ivan III of Russia Jacob Obrecht 1505., but the Dutch were the first permanent settlers on the island.)

There is a persistent myth that dodos were eaten as food for the long voyages between the Cape of Good HopeThe Cape of Good Hope is a headland in South Africa, near Cape Town, traditionally — and incorrectly — regarded as marking the turning point between the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Technically, the division between the two oceans lies farther eas and Asia, but neither historical nor archeological findings corroborate this. Dodos were hardly ever eaten by the Portuguese, who found the dodos hard to eat and very messy. Dutch records concur. The Dutch settlers called it the Walgvogel ("disgusting bird") for the unpleasant taste and texture of the meat. No dodo bones have been found in the old middens of the Dutch fort Frederik Hendrik.

However, when humans first arrived on Mauritius, they also brought with them other animals that had not existed on the island before, including pigs, rats and monkeys, which plundered the dodo nests, while humans destroyed the forests where they made their homes.

There is some controversy surrounding the extinction date of the dodo. David Roberts states that "the extinction of the dodo is commonly dated to the last confirmed sighting in 1662, reported by shipwrecked mariner Volkert Evertsz ", but other sources suggest 1681.

Roberts points out that because the sighting prior to 1662 was in 1638 (ie 24 years earlier), the dodo was likely already very rare by the 1660s. However, statistical analysis of the hunting records of Isaac Joan Lamotius , carried out by Julian Hume and coworkers, gives a new estimated extinction date of 1693, with a 95% confidence interval of 1688 to 1715.

The last known dodo was killed less than 100 years after their discovery, and no complete specimens are preserved, although a number of museums are home to dodo skeletons. Genetic material has been recovered from these and its analysis has confirmed that the dodo was a close relative of the pigeon species that are to be found in Africa and South Asia.

No one took particular notice of the extinct bird, until it was featured in the Caucus race in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). With the popularity of the book, the dodo became a household word: "as dead as a dodo." The character was named Dodo.