London 1865. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) was published. One of the characters in the novel is the dodo; in the third episode the dodo organizes a foolish race in which everyone wins. Carroll explained that the dodo represents the author. The writer's real name was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, and because he was a totem, when they asked him about his name he said, "Do-dodgson."
At that time, most of them were unaware of what dodo was and, thanks to the success of Carroll's book, they considered it a mythic imaginary bird. They were wrong, but not quite. It is true that there was no dodo anymore, but two or three centuries earlier, the clumsy bird lived peacefully on the island of Mauritius.
The Raphus cucullatus, an endemic species on the island of the Indian Ocean, was one meter in length and weighed between 13 and 25 kilos. Small wings didn't give him the power or the need to fly. Mauritius had all kinds of fruits and was able to break the coconuts with a long and strong peak. In the absence of threats, he laid the eggs on the ground. She lived very well adapted to her environment, until the man came to Mauritius.
Thanks to evolution, the descendant of the African dove forgot to fly and the slow bird was very easy to hunt. It seemed like a nice manga for humans, weighing between 10 and 20 kilos of meat effortlessly. But the dodo didn't disappear because of that, because its meat was difficult and tastefully tasteful.
Humans modified the habitat of the dodos. The forests were destroyed and new species were brought in: pigs, macaques, dogs, cats, rats... On the one hand, diseases caused by new animals increased the mortality of dodos and on the other, they also influenced reproduction, which attacked the unprotected nests of the dodos. The species was first known in Europe in 1574. The last copy was seen in 1662. The dodo was eliminated by humans in a century.
But before the species was completely destroyed, they humbled it. The Portuguese arrived on the island in 1607. Although permanent settlements were not established, they seemed to have had time to baptize the clumsy bird. Doudo or doido means fool in Portuguese. After the Portuguese, the conquerors of the Netherlands arrived. Dododoor means in Dutch “haragán”. The alternative was not much nicer: the Dutch also called him walghvogel, that is, “a piojoso turkey.”
There are more respectful theories to explain the origin of the word dodo. Some say that it comes from the Dutch word dodaers, which in the Netherlands is called the common Chilean. But the two species don't look very much. Finally, there are those who relate it to the call of the bird. The dodo did it as when Carroll tried to say the real surname.
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