I was reminiscing recently about the great time I had on Mauritius a decade and a half ago, and whether I would want to include this island on my around the world trip. This is where the Dodo became extinct. Like how wrong we were in remembering the origin of Thanksgiving, my memory of how this bird got extinct apparently is faulty. I recall something like sailors hunted them down because they were so easy to catch, with good meat and useful feathers. More recent research indicates that the plump bird you see in drawings were those of well-fed pets. The wild dodo was leaner with a terrible tasting flesh, and difficult to find because they lived in impenetrable rainforests. What happened was that humans brought rats and domesticated animals. They killed this specie off.
Anyone remember where you last saw this bird? Turns out that the Dodo and and its remains disappeared several times. First they became extinct in 1662. Till today, even though at one time there were millions, there is nary a complete skeleton. English museums (
Mauritius was a British colony) once competed for them. One wave of interest was stimulated by Lewis Carol in his
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (if you clicked on that, you saw a Dodo), where depicted is Alice shaking hands with one. While the real Dodo was only around three feet tall, remember that Alice had drunk a potion, making her smaller.
Then it occurred to me that I had seen another bird, the
Great Auk, in the London British Museum, or maybe it was in the Moscow Darwin Museum. This bird, a bit shorter at 2'7" tall, too, is now extinct. Apparently the final two were killed by fishermen on an island close to Iceland in 1844. The latest report I saw indicated that the Great Auk was poached for their meat and feathers.
Neither of those birds was related to penguins, where the Emperor is around 4 feet tall. Remains of a
6'8" prehistoric penguin were recently found on Antarctica. And yes, penguins are consumed by explorers to supplement their diet. The Great Auk is close to the puffin (
right).
Is humanity killing off other species? Of course, many, but we've done a decent job with
whales, for there are signs of slow recovery. We tend to condemn the Japanese for their whale catches. The truth is that historically they were responsible for only a fraction of world totals, and today
Norway kills more. And they use grenades. Something to do with whales deplete fisheries, as they don't eat them.
Here is a recent clip filming some whale watchers saving a whale.
William Tell arrived in town one day with his son and refused to salute the hat. Gessler was very upset, but instead of killing William Tell right there he challenged him to shoot an apple off his son’s head with one shot. If he succeeded, William Tell could remain free.
William Tell did shoot the apple off his son’s head with a single arrow. But Gessler noticed that before he tried, Tell had taken two arrows out of his quiver and asked why. William Tell answered, “If I had missed, that second arrow would have been headed your way.” Eventually, William Tell did kill Gessler, an act that started
a Swiss uprising that ultimately forced the Austrian invaders from Switzerland.
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I was reminiscing recently about the great time I had on Mauritius a decade and a half ago, and whether I would want to include this island on my around the world trip. This is where the Dodo became extinct. Like how wrong we were in remembering the origin of Thanksgiving, my memory of how this bird got extinct apparently is faulty. I recall something like sailors hunted them down because they were so easy to catch, with good meat and useful feathers. More recent research indicates that the plump bird you see in drawings were those of well-fed pets. The wild dodo was leaner with a terrible tasting flesh, and difficult to find because they lived in impenetrable rainforests. What happened was that humans brought rats and domesticated animals. They killed this specie off.
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