Portuguese sailors on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean discovered the Dodo in 1598. They came unsuspecting towards the visitors and thus was an easy prey. This was due to that the fact that they do not have any natural enemies nor seen any humans before. They were killed by thousands for food. They didn't go extinct only of hunting but also by the pigs, rats, dogs and cats, that were brought to the island by the first inhabitants. They lay eggs on the ground and young Dodo's was an easy prey for those animals. The last Dodo died in 1681.
The Dodo had large legs, short little wings, short neck and a 23cm long enormous thick, bowed beak. At the end of its thickset figure the Dodo has a tussle feathers. The Dodo was gray in color. They couldn't fly. The Dodo toddled on a stiff way. The bird was about 1 meter long and weighed up to 20kg. There aren't many bones preserved today, and there aren't any complete skeletons. This makes it difficult to estimate its true proportions. By analyzing their bones, it shows that the Dodo wasn't probably a thick, clumsy bird at all. Our image of the Dodo comes from old European drawings and accounts. It can be a romanticized version of the truth.
The call of a Dodo was probably very similar to that of a young goose, while other sources say they didn't made a sound at all.
The Dodo's diet consists of seeds and fruits. Skeleton found shows that they swallowed pebbles to help them to digest the hard seeds. The spreading of the Calvaria Trees, which grow on the island of Mauritius, was completely dependent of the Dodo. The bird feeds on the fruits from the tree and their strong stomach holding the pebbles in it cracks the hard fruit so that the seeds can come free. These seeds were then secreted around together with their farces. So this tree's seed only germinated after being eaten by the dodo. After the disappearing of the Dodo, the Calvaria tree went near to extinction. Soon, turkeys were introduced to take over the role of the Dodos and the Calvaria tree were saved.
The Dodo breeds the whole year. The female bird lays only 1 egg each time on the grass. The eggs hatches in 49 days. Stories tells us that the bird claps with their wings as a mating ritual. They were monogamous; which means they stay with a single partner their whole life. The both parents takes care of their young together.
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