Located a few steps from the Jardin de la Compagnie, the Natural History Museum is home to a wealth of knowledge about the fauna and flora of the island. It has over 35000 natural historical and geological specimens, of which 3000 are exhibited. A guided tour...
The Natural History Museum is the oldest museum on the island. The old building, adjacent to the Jardin de la Compagnie in Port Louis, was established by the Natural History Company of Mauritius (now known as the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences) and was first opened to the public in October 1842 in a wing of the former Royal College in Port Louis. Everyday enthusiasts and inquisitive people rush here to see the rich animal and vegetal species of the island.
The Natural History Museum was declared as a national museum in 2000. It houses over 35000 natural historical and geological specimens, of which 3000 are exhibited in the three permanent galleries on the ground floor of the Mauritius Institute. But one of the halls is currently inaccessible due to renovation work.
As soon as one enters the museum, one will be surprised to see animals from the seabed hanging from the ceiling. A huge whale floats peacefully in the air, a few metres from a threatening shark. Accompanied by her parents, a fearful girl refuses to get any closer. "It happens all the time. Children are afraid of the stuffed animals," says the museum's head guard, bluntly. He adds: "they prefer the shells and the multicoloured butterflies that are exhibited in another room." Rare insects like the sphinx and the papilo demodocus are exhibited in the third gallery of the museum. Other insects, mainly used for medical virtues can also found there.
An original skeleton
Under a glass bell, a strange skeleton attracts visitors. Unique in the world, this bird from the island of Rodrigues became extinct at the end of the 18th century due to the introduction of its predators (men and animals) onto the island. The skeleton, exhibited in the museum, was discovered at Caverne Patate and was acquired by the museum in 1900.
In Mauritius, there are also two species of giant tortoises, which disappeared in the late 17th century. In 1776, the French knight Marion Dufresne brought a 200-year-old Sumeire tortoise back from the Seychelles and donated it to the military garrison of the Line Barracks in Port Louis. These tortoises, carefully displayed on a platform at human eye-level, delight the young who can then discover the multitude of animals that trod across Mauritius several hundred years ago.
At the other end of the museum lies the geological section of the museum. There are samples of typical rocks that can be found on the island, as well as minerals, fossils and poly metallic nodules collected from the seabed. A luminous bowl portraying the volcanic activity is also exhibited. It is not uncommon to witness an entire class entering the museum to collect information for a geology project. A gold mine for children and adults
The dodo was first mentioned by Dutch sailors in 1598. By 1681, all dodos had been killed by hungry sailors or their domesticated animals. This was not realized at the time, since the dodo barely left any traces after its extinction, and was later believed to have simply been a mythological creature until the 19th century, when research was conducted on some of the few surviving remains of specimens that had been taken to Europe in the 17th century. Since then, a large amount of sub-fossil material has been collected from Mauritius, increasing the amount of solid evidence relating to the bird. The extinction of the bird, within 80 years of its discovery, made people realise for the first time that humans could induce the extinction of plants and animals.[3]
The dodo was made well-known to the public due to a notable role in Alice in Wonderland, and it has since become a fixture in popular culture. Its name has subsequently become associated with the notion of extinction and obsolescence
Taxonomy and evolution
Many different affinities have historically been suggested for the dodo, including to ostriches and vultures, until Johannes Theodor Reinhardt proposed they were ground doves, based on studies of a dodo skull in Copenhagen:[4]
"The Dodo agrees in the form of the majority of its cranial bones, and even in the shape of the beak, with the prevailing type of the Pigeons, as I had perceived, in common with my colleague v. Hamel, in the summer of 1846."This view was later supported by Hugh Edwin Strickland and Melville after a dissection of the preserved head and foot from a stuffed specimen at Oxford Museum, but it remained controversial.[5] The theory has recently been confirmed by mtDNA cytochrome b and 12S rRNA sequence[6] analysis, wherein DNA extracted from a tarsal from the dodo-foot in Oxford was compared with genetic material from other birds, that suggests that the ancestors of the dodo diverged from those of its closest known relative, the likewise extinct Rodrigues Solitaire, around the Paleogene-Neogene boundary. As the Mascarene Islands are of volcanic origin and less than 10 million years old, the ancestors of both these birds likely remained capable of flight for considerable time after the separation of their lineages. The same study has been interpreted to show that the Southeast Asian Nicobar Pigeon is the closest living relative of the dodo and the Rodrigues Solitaire.[7] The generic name of the dodo-like Tooth-billed Pigeon from Samoa is Didunculus, which means "little Dodo",[8] and it was also shown to be quite close to the dodo in the study. However, this proposed phylogeny is problematical regarding the relationships of other taxa.[9] All that can be presently said with certainty is that the ancestors of the didine birds were pigeons from Southeast Asia or the Wallacea, which agrees with the origin of most Mascarene birds.
[edit] Etymology
One of the original names used for the dodo was "walghvogel" ("wallow bird" or "loathsome bird", in reference to its taste), first used in the journal of vice-admiral Wybrand van Warwijck, who visited the island with the Van Neck expedition in 1598:
On their left hand was a little island which they named Heemskirk Island, and the bay it selve they called Warwick Bay... finding in this place great quantity of foules twice as bigge as swans, which they call Walghstocks or Wallowbirdes being very good meat. But finding an abundance of pigeons & popinnayes [parrots], they disdained any more to eat those great foules calling them Wallowbirds, that is to say lothsome or fulsome birdes.The bird was also referred to as "dronte" by the Dutch, meaning "swollen", a name still used in some languages.
In his 18th century work Systema Naturae, Carl Linnaeus coined the specific name cucullatus, meaning hooded, but combined it with the genus name Struthio, that of the ostrich. Mathurin Jacques Brisson erected the new genus name Raphus, referring to bustards, resulting in the current name. Linnaeus later coined the fitting name Didus ineptus, but this has become a synonym of the earlier name due to nomenclatural priority.
[edit] Description
About 15 illustrations were made while interaction with the dodo was possible (1598–1640), and they are the primary evidence for its external appearance, along with various written accounts of encounters with dodos on Mauritius, and with a captive bird in London.[19] According to most renditions, the dodo had greyish or brownish plumage, with lighter primary feathers, and a tuft of curly light feathers high on its rear end. The head was grey and naked, with a green, black and yellow beak, and the legs were stout and yellowish, with black claws.
An early account from Van Neck's journey in 1598 describes the bird thus:
"Blue parrots are very numerous there, as well as other birds; among which are a kind, conspicuous for their size, larger than our swans, with huge heads only half covered with skin as if clothed with a hood. These birds lack wings, in the place of which 3 or 4 blackish feathers protrude. The tail consists of a few soft incurved feathers, which are ash coloured. These we used to call 'Walghvogel', for the reason that the longer and oftener they were cooked, the less soft and more insipid eating they became. Nevertheless their belly and breast were of a pleasant flavour and easily masticated."[20]One of the most detailed descriptions is by Sir Thomas Herbert from 1634:
"First here only and in Dygarrois [now Rodrigues, likely referring to the Solitaire] is generated the Dodo, which for shape and rareness may antagonize the Phoenix of Arabia: her body is round and fat, few weigh less than fifty pound. It is reputed more for wonder than for food, greasie stomackes may seeke after them, but to the delicate they are offensive and of no nourishment. Her visage darts forth melancholy, as sensible of Nature's injurie in framing so great a body to be guided with complementall wings, so small and impotent, that they serve only to prove her bird.
The halfe of her head is naked seeming couered with a fine vaile, her bill is crooked downwards, in midst is the trill [nostril], from which part to the end tis a light green, mixed with pale yellow tincture; her eyes are small and like to Diamonds, round and rowling; her clothing downy feathers, her train three small plumes, short and inproportionable, her legs suiting her body, her pounces sharpe, her appetite strong and greedy. Stones and iron are digested, which description will better be conceived in her representation."
The traditional image of the dodo is of a very fat, clumsy bird, but this view may be exaggerated. The general opinion of scientists today is that the old European drawings showed overfed captive specimens.[22][23] Estimations based on skeletal measurements suggest that wild Dodos might have weighed about 10.2 kilograms (22 lb).[24][25] The Dutch painter Roelant Savery was the most prolific and influential illustrator of the dodo, and depicted it at least six times. A famous painting of his from 1626 now called "Edwards' Dodo" in the British Museum has since become the standard image of a dodo. The image shows a particularly fat bird, and is the source of many other dodo restorations.[26] A 17th century painting attributed to the Mughal artist Ustad Mansur which was rediscovered in the 1950s shows a dodo along with native Indian birds. It depicts a slimmer, brownish bird, and is regarded by professor A. Ivanov and Julian Hume as one of the most accurate depictions of a dodo.[27]
[edit] The white dodo
Willem Ysbrandtsz. Bontekoe, who visited Reunion around 1619, mentioned that it was inhabited by "Dod-eersen", though without mentioning colouration. A white bird was first described as follows in 1625 by Mr. Tatton, the Chief Officer of Captain Castleton:
"There is store of land fowle both small and great, plenty of Doves, great Parrats, and such like; and a great fowle of the bignesse of a Turkie, very fat, and so short winged, that they cannot fly, being white, and in a manner tame: and so be all other fowles, as having not been troubled nor feared with shot. Our men did beat them down with sticks and stones. Ten men may take fowle enough to serve fortie men a day."
"Solitaires. These birds are thus named because they always go alone. They are as big as a big goose and have white plumage, black at the extremity of the wings and of the tail. At the tail there are some feathers resembling those of the Ostrich. They have the neck long and the beak formed like that of the Woodcocks, but larger, and the legs and feet like those of Turkey-chicks. This bird betakes itself to running, only flying but very little. It is the best game on the Island."19th century nauralists assumed these descriptions were of the white dodo shown in the paintings, and a new species, Didus solitarius, was erected. Walter Rothschild suggested that the reason why the painted specimens had yellow wing-tips instead of black as in the old descriptions might have been albinism.[28] Others believed it was a species similar to the Rodrigues Solitaire, as it was referred to as "Solitaire" as well, or even that there were white species of both the dodo and solitaires on the island.
Since Reunión was not visited by Europeans until 1635, the 1611 painting could not have shown a bird from there.[31] In 1987, fossils of a recently extinct species of ibis in the genus Threskiornis were described from Réunion, and it is now believed that this bird was the source of the old sailors' descriptions, since they are white with black parts and have long, slender beaks, like woodcocks. No fossil remains of dodo-like birds have ever been found on the island.
[edit] Behaviour and ecology
"The call is like that of a gosling but they are quite unpalatable to eat... They lay one egg, which is quite as large as a penny bun, against which they lay a white stone the size of a chicken's egg. They lay their egg on a nest of grass which they collect and they place the nest in the woods. If one kills the young you find a grey stone in the gizzard. We named them the birds of Nazareth.[32] "An account of a "young ostrich" taken on board a ship in 1617 is the only other mention of a possible juvenile dodo.[33]
[edit] Diet
A single account exists about the diet of the dodo, a document from 1631 rediscovered in 1887 but now lost:"These Burgmeesters are superb and proud. They displayed themselves to us with stiff and stern faces, and wide-open mouths. Jaunty and audacious of gait, they would scarcely move a foot before us. Their war weapon was their mouth, with which they could bite fiercely; their food was fruit; they were not well feathered but abundantly covered with fat. Many of them were brought onboard to the delight of us all.[32] "
"About 1638, as I walked London streets, I saw the picture of a strange looking fowle hung out upon a clothe and myselfe with one or two more in company went in to see it. It was kept in a chamber, and was a great fowle somewhat bigger than the largest Turkey cock, and so legged and footed, but stouter and thicker and of more erect shape, coloured before like the breast of a young cock fesan, and on the back of a dunn or dearc colour. The keeper called it a Dodo, and in the ende of a chymney in the chamber there lay a heape of large pebble stones, whereof hee gave it many in our sight, some as big as nutmegs, and the keeper told us that she eats them (conducing to digestion), and though I remember not how far the keeper was questioned therein, yet I am confident that afterwards she cast them all again."[34]
Temple's hypothesis has been contested. Others have suggested the decline of the tree was exaggerated, or that other extinct animals may also have been distributing the seeds, such as Cylindraspis tortoises, fruit bats or the Broad-billed Parrot. Wendy Strahm and Anthony Cheke, two experts in Mascarene ecology, claim that while a rare tree, it has germinated since the demise of the Dodo and numbers a few hundred, not 13.[39]
In 2004, Botanical Society of America's Plant Science Bulletin disputed Dr. Temple's research as flawed. They published evidence as to why the dodo's extinction did not directly cause the increasing disappearance of young calvaria trees, and suggesting that tortoises would have been more likely to disperse the seeds than dodo, hence discrediting Temple's view on the dodo and the Calvaria's sole survival relationship.[40]
[edit] Relationship with humans
The first accounts can be found in reports of the 1598 voyage of Admiral Jacob van Neck published in 1601, which also featured the first published illustration of the bird. According to Julian Hume, the following may be the first mention of the bird, here referred to as penguins, which was not used for sphenisciformes at the time:
"We also found large birds, with wings as large as of a pigeon, so that they could not fly and were named penguins by the Portuguese. These particular birds have a stomach so large that it could provide two men with a tasty meal and was actually the most delicious part of the bird."[42]
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Since the early sailors who visited Mauritius had been at sea for a long time, their main interest in these large birds was culinary. Although many later writings say that the meat tasted bad, early journals only state that the meat was tough but good, though not as delectable as the abundantly available pigeons.[43] But the dodo was also found interesting enough that living specimens were sent to Europe and to the East. In 1626 Emmanuel Altham, who was visiting Mauritius, sent a letter to his brother in England:
"You shall receive a jar of India ginger for my sister your wife, as also some beades for my cousins your daughters, and with all a strange fowle which I had at the island of Mauritius, called by ye portingalls a Dodo, which for rareness thereof I hope will be welcome to you. Mauritius ye 18th June 1628. Your most loving brother, Emmanuel Altham.[44] "It is not known if the dodo survived the journey, and the letter was destroyed by fire in the 19th century. At least three or four live birds were taken to Europe, some of which are believed to have been depicted alive, and which may be the source of the few non-fossil remains that are known today. Two live specimens were taken to India in the 1600s according to Peter Mundy, and one of these appears to have been depicted in an Indian painting.[41] One dodo is even mentioned to have been sent a far as Nagasaki, Japan in 1647.[45]
The journal of Willem Van West-Zanen from 1602, which was not published until 1648, contains some accounts of interaction with dodos and describes a large number of birds taken as food:
They caught birds called by some Dod-aars by others Dronte. These were given the name Walghvogel during Van Neck's voyage, because even with long stewing they would hardly become tender, but stayed tough and hard with the exception of the breast and stomach which were extremely good... The sailors brought 50 birds back to the Bruin-Vis, among them 24 or 25 Dod-aarsen, so big and heavy that scarcely two were consumed at meal time, and all that were remaining were flung into salt.
For food the seamen hunt the flesh of feathered fowl,Two hundred thirty years before Darwin's theory of evolution, the appearance of the dodo and the red rail led Peter Mundy to speculate:
They tap the palms, and round-rumped dodos they destroy,
The parrot's life they spare that he may peep and howl,
And thus his fellows to imprisonment decoy.
Of these 2 sorts off fowl afforementionede, For oughtt wee yett know, Not any to bee Found out of this Iland, which lyeth aboutt 100 leagues From St. Lawrence. A question may bee demaunded how they should bee here and Not elcewhere, beeing soe Farer From other land and can Neither fly or swymme; whither by Mixture off kindes producing straunge and Monstrous formes, or the Nature of the Climate, ayer and earth in alltring the First shapes in long tyme, or how.[46]
[edit] Extinction
Although there are scattered reports of mass killings of dodos for provisioning of ships, archaeological investigations have hitherto found scant evidence of human predation on these birds. Bones of at least two dodos were found in caves at Baie du Cap, fugitive slaves and convicts used these caves for shelters in the 17th century—but due to their isolation in high, broken terrain, they were not easily accessible to dodos.[50]
"These animals on our coming up to them stared at us and remained quiet where they stand, not knowing whether they had wings to fly away or legs to run off, and suffering us to approach them as close as we pleased. Amongst these birds were those which in India they call Dod-aersen (being a kind of very big goose); these birds are unable to fly, and instead of wings, they merely have a few small pins, yet they can run very swiftly. We drove them together into one place in such a manner that we could catch them with our hands, and when we held one of them by its leg, and that upon this it made a great noise, the others all on a sudden came running as fast as they could to its assistance, and by which they were caught and made prisoners also."
Statistical analysis of the hunting records of Isaac Johannes Lamotius give a new estimated extinction date of 1693, with a 95% confidence interval of 1688 to 1715; the last reported sighting is from these hunting records, which give the year 1688, but it has been suggested that by this time the Dutch name "dodaers" had been transferred to the flightless Red Rail, which is now also extinct.[53] Considering more circumstantial evidence such as travelers' reports and the lack of good reports after 1689,[50] it is likely that the dodo became extinct before 1700; the last dodo died a little more than a century after the species' discovery in 1598.[54]
Even though its rareness was reported in the 17th century, it was not realised that it had gone extinct until the 19th century. This was partially because extinction was not believed to be possible at the time due to religious reasons, and would not become so before Georges Cuvier demonstrated it as fact, but also because many scientists doubted the dodo had ever actually existed in the first place.[55] It was first used as an example of a human induced extinction in Penny Magazine, 1833:
The agency of man, in limiting the increase of the inferior animals, and in extirpating certain races, was perhaps never more strikingly exemplified than in the case of the Dodo. That a species so remarkable in its character should become extinct, within little more than two centuries, so that the fact of its existence at all has been doubted, is a circumstance which may well excite our surprise, and lead us to a consideration of similar changes which are still going on from the same cause.[56]
[edit] Surviving remains
That as any particular grows old and perishing the keeper may remove it into one of the closets or other repository; and some other to be substituted.[59]Unfortunately no substitute existed, and most of the specimen was burned, but the head and right foot were cut off and saved for posterity. This remaining soft tissue has since degraded further, as the head was dissected in the late 19th century, separating the skin from the skull, and the foot is in a skeletal state.[60]
Few took particular notice of the bird immediately after its extinction. By the early 19th century it seemed altogether too strange a creature, and many believed it a myth. In 1848, H. E. Strickland and A. G. Melville published a book titled The Dodo and Its Kindred; or the History, Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and Other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon in which they attempted to separate Dodo myth from reality.
After many fruitless visits to the spot... I resolved by sending some men into the centre of the marsh, where the water was about three feet deep and there, by feeling in the mud with their naked feet, they met with one entire tibia, a portion of another, and a tarso-metatarsus. The dodo bones were imbedded only in the mud at the bottom of the water in the deepest part of the marsh... Encouraged by success, I employed several hands to search in the manner described, but I met with but few specimens of dodo bones till I thought of cutting away a mass of floating herbage nearly two feet in thickness, which covered the deepest part of the marsh. In the mud under this, I was rewarded by finding bones of many dodos.[61]
The Oxford University Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History, and the Senckenberg Museum, among others, have almost complete specimens assembled from the dissociated remains found in the swamp. 26 museums around the world have significant holdings of dodo material. An alleged dodo egg is on display at the East London museum in South Africa, but genetic studies are underway to determine its authencity.[63]
In October 2005, part of the Mare aux Songes, the most important site of dodo remains, was excavated by an international team of researchers. Many remains were found, including bones from birds of various stages of maturity,[64] and several bones obviously belonging to the skeleton of one individual bird and preserved in natural position.[12] These findings were made public in December 2005 in the Naturalis museum in Leiden. The finds showed that 7.1% of the fossil remains found in the swamp belonged to dodos, and that they had accumulated over several centuries.[65] Subsequent excavations suggested that dodos, along with other animals, became mired in Mare aux Songes trying to reach available water during a long period of severe drought about 4,200 years ago.[66][67]
In June 2007, adventurers exploring a cave in Mauritius discovered the most complete and best-preserved dodo skeleton ever.[68]
A wooden box full of dodo bones from the Edwardian era was rediscovered at the Grant Museum in 2011, during preparation for the museum to move into a new building.[69]
The Cambridge University Museum of Zoology has a complete skeleton of a dodo,[70] although it is not usually on display.
[edit] Cultural significance
The dodo's significance as one of the best-known extinct animals and its singular appearance has led to its use in literature and popular culture to symbolize a concept or object that will or has become out of date, as in the expression "dead as a dodo" which has come to mean undoubtedly and unquestionably dead, while the phrase "to go the way of the dodo" means to become extinct or obsolete, to fall out of common usage or practice, or to become a thing of the past, both in reference to the untimely extinction of the bird.[72][73] Coincidentally, the word dodo is an anagram for the Dutch word for dead, "dood".
The dodo is used by many environmental organizations that promote the protection of endangered species, such as the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Jersey Zoological Park, founded by Gerald Durrell.[74]
In 2009 a previously unpublished 17th century Dutch illustration of a dodo went for sale at Christie's, and was expected to sell for £6,000.[75] It is unknown whether it was drawn after a live or stuffed specimen, or simply a copy of another image. It was sold for £44,450.[76]
