• Question: when did the dodo become extinct

    Asked by KaiF to Anna, James, Joe, Leonie, Olivia on 12 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Hi kaiF,

      There is some debate about the date the Dodo went extinct, but it is around 1660. It grew on an island with no natural predetors and so it was fearless, which made it easy prey for sailors seeking fresh meat!

    • Photo: Anna Ashton

      Anna Ashton answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      Hi KaiF,

      It was last seen in 1662, less than 100 years after sailors came and settled on their home, the island of Mauritius.

      It was an easy catch to hunt because it had no fear of humans, it didn’t have any predators before they came along.

      But some people think it may have lived for another 30 years after this, just without being seen. Maybe it had learnt by then to stay away from humans.

    • Photo: Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes

      Leonie Oostwoud Wijdenes answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      I didn’t know the answer to this question, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. This is what it says:

      “The last claimed sighting of a dodo was reported in the hunting records of Isaac Johannes Lamotius in 1688. Statistical analysis of these records by Roberts and Solow gives a new estimated extinction date of 1693, with a 95% confidence interval of 1688–1715.”

      This means that we do not know for sure when exactly the dodo became extinct. But based on reports of people who claim to have seen a dodo, we think that the last dodo died in 1693, and we are quite certain that there was no dodo alive after 1715.

      If you are interested, there’s a lot of other interesting stuff about dodo’s on the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo

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