Extinction Awareness Day

The dodo is probably the best known of the recently extinct animals, though much of its existence are somewhat of a mystery.  There are so many references to the dodo in pop culture which I thought fitting to add at the end of today's post.  Will Cuppy summed up cultural perception of the Dodo when he stated, "The Dodo never had a chance.  He seemed to be invented for the sole purpose of going extinct and that is all he was good for." The Dodo bird was a very unique bird, who wasn't adapted to predators.  The Dodo was a 3 foot tall, 50 pound flightless member of the pigeon family that lived east of Madagascar on the island of Mauritius.  The dodo was eaten for food, even though sailors didn’t like the taste.  The dodo was labeled as foolish, because it was curious and didn’t fear people.  It is reported that sailors could knock on trees in the forest and the dodos would come to investigate the new noise. The tambalacoque tree also known as th...

Although the "dodo tree" is not extinct, it had been thought to be highly at risk due to the loss of the Dodo bird.  It was thought by 1973 that only 13 tree remained, all over 300 years old.  It had been determined that there are probably a few hundred trees left today, but it's been hard to tell for sure. The seed of the Tambalacoque tree has a very thick shell.  It had been theorized that without the Dodo present the Tambalacoque seeds would not be able to germinate on their own. These seeds had been a favorite of the Dodo and once ingested could be transported and broken down, thus starting the next tambalacoque generation. They seem to have had a symbiotic relationship. Today wild turkeys are being fed Tambalacoque seeds to break down the hard shell and people are even scraping the dense coating off by hand in order to plant the next generation. It seems that the Tambalacoque tree will be able to stave off extinction without the Dodo there to help out, th...