A bird that couldn’t fly.
Scientists have found bits as a skeleton of one of the most famous of all extinct animals, the dodo. The dodo was a big bird, that couldn’t fly. It died out more than 300 years ago. Scientists say that the fat clumsy dodo was hunted to extinction by people. They also think, that the bird didn’t do much to help itself survive. The dodo was known to be slow-moving and not afraid of people, hunted it. Even the bird’s name, dodo, comes from the Portuguese, word for “fool”.
Gerald Durrell, the famous writer and zoologist, thought that the dodo died out because of human’s irresponsibility. The dodo lived in a Mauritius island in the Indian Ocean. There weren’t predators in the island, so the dodo and many other birds didn’t know what is danger. Their nests were not on the trees but on the ground. People brought dogs, cats, rats, pigs, monkeys in the island. They have suppressed the inhabitants of this little world, and people were the most dangerous predator. They hadn’t thought about salvation of the rare animals.
But now zoologists have taken care of different rare animals and birds of Mauritius. One of them is
the pink pigeon, dawn-color bird
The pink pigeon is inhabitant of Mauritius. They live in the dense forests of island and have sonorous voice. Pink pigeons usually sing their songs in the evening. These charming birds don’t afraid of people. So they also had suffering because of people and especially because of monkeys, which ruined their nests. Roughly 50 years ago they were only 33 birds on the island. Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust was the first who helped pink pigeons to survive.
