Sir David Attenborough comes face-to-face with the dodo, the first animal driven to extinction by humans in recorded history. In this extraordinary encounter, he reveals how this long-lost species has been misrepresented over time.
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TRANSCRIPT
- This poor old bird is a dodo.
It once lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.
And it's almost certainly the first animal species that human beings actually exterminated in historic times.
And so now we talk about being 'as dead as a dodo.'
But in spite of its fame, this one is a fake.
Its feathers come from a goose.
Its feet were modeled on a turkey and its beak, I suspect, is plaster.
The museum can be forgiven because no skin or feathers of the dodo survive.
Its image was influenced by pictures like this one painted by a 17th century Dutch artist, Roland Savery.
But he had never seen a living dodo and based his image on accounts by seafarers.
I've often wondered whether dodos actually looked like that.
But unfortunately, they'd all disappeared before anyone could get a good look at them.
Until now.
This funny, dumpy creature is how the bird is usually represented these days.
But I've seen quite a lot of flightless birds over the years, and this one doesn't quite ring true.
An examination of the way its thighs join its pelvis has shown that in life it actually stood much more upright.
We now know that its feathers were probably a lot fluffier than in that painting.
We also now know that it was related to the pigeon, and some experts suggest that it made a pigeon-like call, which gave the bird its name.
The dodo probably fed on fruit.
There was a lot of it on the island.
I'll try him with a bit.
Come on.
What do you make of that?
That's a very powerful beak.
In fact, it may well have been adapted for crushing shells and crustaceans for the sake of the calcium.
And there's a female.
Maybe she is another reason why they had such large beaks - to show off with during courtship.