Rethinking the dodo

It is one of the most famous birds ever to have lived but the dodo is still a bit of a mystery. It’s often portrayed as a heavy, slow and not very clever animal – in the 2002 film Ice Age, some very silly dodos fight over three watermelons – but a new research project is challenging this image. Scientists know the dodo was a flightless bird that lived on Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean (see panel). Little is known about dodos because they became extinct in the 17th century, before accurate modern methods for recording animals had been introduced. In the latest study, a research team looked through 400 years of writing on the dodo and analysed scientific collections around the UK. They concluded that the dodo…

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The Week Junior (UK) (Digital) - 1 Issue, 455

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