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The Dodo Thread

There are two boxes of Dodo bones from the Mare aux Songes in southeast Mauritius at the Grant Museum of Zoology (UCL) in London. Apparently no stuffed dodos remain in any collections as the last two were lost to fire and attack from museum pests, although there are some mock-ups. On the excellent Grant Museum blog (Specimen of the week 200), it was revealed that the Dodo case was one of the most popular exhibitions gauged by the “filth left on the glass by visitors scale”. Jack Ashby (former Curator) also wrote about whether Dodo bones belong in a Museum after two bones were sold at auction into private hands for £30,000 in 2013.
Interesting snippet in the Mail at that time "In 1886 George Clarke went to Mauritius, the only place the dodo is said to have lived, and hired slaves to wade through a swamp and feel for the bones with their feet"

Do-do.jpg

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/culture/grant-museum-zoology/dodo-bones
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/tag/dodo/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/science...-flightless-DODO-set-sell-30-000-auction.html
 
Less dead than the dodo?

Not so dead as a dodo: ‘De-extinction’ plan to reintroduce bird to Mauritius​


https://www.cnn.com/dodo-de-extinction-mauritius-spc-intl-scn/index.html

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An audacious collaboration between geneticists and conservationists plans to bring back the extinct dodo and reintroduce it to its once-native habitat in Mauritius.

US-based biotechnology and genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences, which is pursuing the “de-extinction” of multiple species, including the woolly mammoth, has entered a partnership with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation to find a suitable location for the large flightless birds.
....
The full genome of the dodo has been sequenced by Beth Shapiro, lead paleogeneticist at Colossal. In addition, the company says it has now sequenced the genome of the solitaire, an extinct relative of the dodo from Rodrigues Island, close to Mauritius, and the Nicobar pigeon, the dodo’s closest living relative, which resides on islands in Southeast Asia spanning the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
 
Cant we have a bird that tastes nice?
I believe the Dodo was a bit like a giant flightless pigeon & they taste nice so I think it bodes well. Could be on the pricey side though so start saving now.
 
Less dead than the dodo?

Not so dead as a dodo: ‘De-extinction’ plan to reintroduce bird to Mauritius​


https://www.cnn.com/dodo-de-extinction-mauritius-spc-intl-scn/index.html

-----------------------------------------------
An audacious collaboration between geneticists and conservationists plans to bring back the extinct dodo and reintroduce it to its once-native habitat in Mauritius.

US-based biotechnology and genetic engineering company Colossal Biosciences, which is pursuing the “de-extinction” of multiple species, including the woolly mammoth, has entered a partnership with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation to find a suitable location for the large flightless birds.
....
The full genome of the dodo has been sequenced by Beth Shapiro, lead paleogeneticist at Colossal. In addition, the company says it has now sequenced the genome of the solitaire, an extinct relative of the dodo from Rodrigues Island, close to Mauritius, and the Nicobar pigeon, the dodo’s closest living relative, which resides on islands in Southeast Asia spanning the Indian and Pacific Oceans.

I always assumed the Tooth-Billed Pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris) also known as Manumea or Little Dodo, was the nearest living relative.
It's critically endangered itself, with maybe a couple of hundred still trying to escape being eaten in Samoa.

It's a very archaic-looking bird just over a foot long and with, as the name suggests, tooth-like protuberances in its lower bill.

dodo.png


https://www.theguardian.com/environ...ed-pigeon-samoa-critically-endangered-hunting

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooth-billed_pigeon
 
I believe the Dodo was a bit like a giant flightless pigeon & they taste nice so I think it bodes well. Could be on the pricey side though so start saving now.
I am currently reading The Dodo and the Solitaire by Jolyon Parish. There is conflicting information and it can be difficult to know which birds are actually being talked about as Collins guides were not available back then. So they are at once said to make a delicious meal, especially the stomach and to be virtually inedible, requiring a great deal of boiling. So take your pick!
 
I am currently reading The Dodo and the Solitaire by Jolyon Parish. There is conflicting information and it can be difficult to know which birds are actually being talked about as Collins guides were not available back then. So they are at once said to make a delicious meal, especially the stomach and to be virtually inedible, requiring a great deal of boiling. So take your pick!
I'll choose the one that makes a delicious meal please.

Or does it perhaps mean the Dodo is inedible but a really great cook?
 
I'll choose the one that makes a delicious meal please.

Or does it perhaps mean the Dodo is inedible but a really great cook?
I'm sure I read that sailors who landed on Mauritius ended up eating the dodo due to lack of alternative, but that it tasted disgusting.

However, the ethics of bringing extinct species back from the dead is tricky enough as it is. I definitely don't think we should bother if the first thing we do is see what they taste like!
 
However, the ethics of bringing extinct species back from the dead is tricky enough as it is. I definitely don't think we should bother if the first thing we do is see what they taste like!

Cultivating a market for dodo meat ('Taste History') could easily raise the investment required to fund the resurrection project if handled properly.
 
I'm sure I read that sailors who landed on Mauritius ended up eating the dodo due to lack of alternative, but that it tasted disgusting.

However, the ethics of bringing extinct species back from the dead is tricky enough as it is. I definitely don't think we should bother if the first thing we do is see what they taste like!
Being tasty to modern humanity is a great darwinian survival strategy though, like being a super cute animal (though for opposite reason). Cattle arent going extinct anytime soon, and neither are red pandas.
 
Didn't rats have a big part to play in the extinction of the dodo? They seem to, with most ground-nesting birds, so how are the scientists going to ensure that they don't just do it again?
 
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