Watch the video to see the tragic reason the dodo birds went extinct!
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00:00If there's one thing most people know about the dodo bird, it's that they were dumb. If
00:04they had been human, they would have been the kind of person who changed his pants while
00:07driving. And that's supposedly why they went extinct, because they were so dumb. At least,
00:12that's the story we've been fed. But is it true?
00:15Turns out, the whole story that the dumb dodo got itself hunted to extinction by being so
00:19stupid may have been a big load of doo-doo. Instead, it's human stupidity that killed
00:24the dodo. Leon Klassens, a professor of vertebrate paleontology and evolution, believes the
00:29Dutch sailors who first encountered the dodo in 1598 on the island of Mauritius didn't
00:34actually hunt the bird to extinction, but their mindless actions likely had an indirect
00:39role in the demise of the species.
00:40Previously, it was believed the birds were fat and were hunted for food. But we now know
00:44that the bird was likely much leaner than previously thought, and therefore not as appetizing
00:48of a meal, for the sailors or for anything else, which may explain why they had no natural
00:53predators. Further, the island's dense jungles would have also made it much harder for the
00:57small band of sailors to catch the birds, regardless of how unafraid the dodos were
01:01of human beings.
01:02Klassens believes the real problem was that the ships which carried the sailors to Mauritius
01:06also brought rats and other animals to the island. These animals would have been able
01:10to multiply quickly in an unrestricted habitat, and would have feasted on dodo eggs and outcompeted
01:14them for food. A double extinction whammy.
01:17And then the triple whammy hit. Rapid habitat loss. The island of Mauritius was not initially
01:22considered very valuable, just a place for ships to stop over. Some even thought the
01:27island was cursed due to a large amount of shipwrecks in the area. That all changed when
01:31the Dutch realized they could export the island's ebony wood for sale, which became the island's
01:35primary economic activity.
01:38Not long after, settlers were turning the once-wild island into a big agricultural plantation,
01:43leading to heavy deforestation and loss of native plant species. The forests that provided
01:47the natural protection for the dodo birds gave way to sugarcane fields, making the birds
01:51oversized sitting ducks for any predator who came along, as the dodos literally had
01:55no fight-or-flight reflex. Lack of flight also made the dodos ill-suited to surviving
02:00natural disasters. Evidence has been found that even before human settlement, many of
02:04the birds died in flash floods brought on by cyclones. Once they lost the natural protection
02:08of their sheltered forests, they became even more vulnerable.
02:12The entry for dodo in the Oxford English Dictionary describes something that is no longer effective,
02:16valid, or interesting. And the origin of the word comes from the Portuguese dodo, translating
02:20to simpleton. It's a sad legacy for what was once a beautiful, totally innocent creature
02:25that was destroyed by human indifference. We basically killed them and then called them
02:29stupid for dying.
02:31These days, though, that legacy is finally changing, as dodos are a symbol of how quickly
02:35and profoundly humans can impact an environment and drive a species to extinction. Until we
02:40can clone them, dodos are gone forever, but the best thing we can do about it is to learn
02:44from the mistakes of our ancestors.
02:47And those mistakes happened fast. It only took 100 years to wipe out the dodo. While
02:51exact dates of extinction vary, many believe the dodo was gone by the 1660s. Just like
02:56that, almost every trace of an entire species was gone forever.
03:00All we've got are a few records and sketches from sailors and one or two shoddily stuffed
03:04birds in museums. We're hardly even sure what color they were. Many renderings show dodos
03:09with white feathers, but firsthand accounts describe them with gray to black plumage.
03:14Heck, we didn't even know they had kneecaps until 2014, after a 3D scan of the last remaining
03:19skeleton revealed them.
03:20So have we learned our lesson? Not yet, it seems. In another 100 years, it's estimated
03:25that 25% of all bird species will be extinct in the wild, unless we take some big steps
03:30now to clean up our act. If not, we'll be the real dodos. Single one.