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Wednesday, March 21st, 2007 - 11:02 PM

The Dodo

My friend Thom told me today that he read an article in which Richard Dawkins pointed out that dodos aren’t extinct because they were good eating (they were supposedly not at all tasty), but because it was just so darn much fun to bash their heads in.

I find it disturbing that only about a century ago people were so cruel that they deprived future generations of that joy.

Fortunately, we have progressed as a society. If the dodo were alive today, people would farm them.

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2 Comments to “The Dodo”

  1. Woody Thrower Says:
    March 21st, 2007 at 11:52 pm

    I suspect this is the quote Thom was talking about:

    When Portuguese sailors arrived on Mauritius in 1507, the abundant dodos were completely tame, and approached the sailors in a trusting manner. Alas for trust. They were clubbed to death by Portuguese, and later Dutch, sailors – even though they were deemed “unpalatable”. Presumably it was “sport”.

    I didn’t find the original article online, but I did find a page with an excerpt.

  2. Woody Thrower Says:
    March 22nd, 2007 at 12:00 am

    D’oh! Looks like they’ve been extinct longer than I realized. I thought the last of them died out at the end of the 19th century, but it turns out it was more like the end of the 17th century.

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