March
15
/ 2023
Have you ever wondered where the phrase “dead as a dodo” comes from? Used to describe something obsolete, unimportant and unquestionably dead, the saying was inspired by the sad story of the long-dead dodo. First recorded by European explorers in Mauritius, the trusting dodo garnered a reputation as a bumbling fool and was extinct within a century of its discovery. The dodo was a flightless forest bird, much like a giant ground pigeon, endemic to Mauritius off East Africa, an island with no human settlement prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1500s. Thought to have originated millions of years ago in Southeast Asia, after sea levels rose the dodo existed in isolation. Dodos are mysterious creatures. With
