Will Dodos Be Back? Revisiting the Extinction of Dodos and Its Connection to the Spice Trade

By BazzaDaRambler - Oxford University Museum of Natural History ... dodo - dead apparently.Uploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20054563

Raising the Dodo Back

2025 dawned with exciting talk about bringing the extinct bird species, Dodo, back to life. Colossal Bioscience, a bio-technology company famously committed to bringing back the Wooly Mammoth and other extinct species including Dodos announced in January 2025 that it raised $200 million from investors to fulfill this mission.

Resurrecting extinct animal species is a fascinating prospect, involving the mapping of the entire genome of the species. If the bird comes back to life, that would be a momentous achievement for humanity proving that we can correct at least a few harmful consequences of our progress upon the planet. However, such a step would also draw criticism from some quarters, cynical of us playing God.

The Spice Trade and the Colonists

The planet's history is fraught with examples of one species' rise triggering another's decline. In many cases, the rising species has been a constant, that is us, humans. We find all kinds of big and small flora and fauna on the declining side. The evolutionary advantage has long been tilted in favor of the human species, tragically failing others. The case of the extinct bird, Dodo, has drawn attention because it was among the most recent and known. Human history of navigation and the onset of colonisation of Asia and Africa by Europe sealed the fate of this avian beauty.

Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean, was an ideal stopover for sailors who followed the monsoon winds in search of the Indian subcontinent. They wanted to find an easy sea route to India, purchase the much-coveted spices like pepper and cardamom from its tropical lands, and make wealth selling them in Central Asia and Europe.

The first travelers who arrived on the coast of Mauritius were sea-worn and hungry. They found this green tropical haven a welcome shelter and soon undertook a plunder of this island’s natural products, destroying the native population’s food self-sufficiency.

Dodos were birds native to the island. These flightless birds became easy prey and edible meat to the sailors. Along with giant turtles and many other Indigenous species, Dodos were constantly on the staple diet of sailors as long as they stayed on the island.

In her book, ‘Pepper: A History of the World's Most Influential Spice’, Marjorie Shaffer (2013) reveals this pepper connection to the Dodo extinction as she wrote,

“Not surprisingly, animals living on islands in the Indian Ocean where the pepper traders stopped were especially vulnerable to the depredations caused by hungry men seeking fresh food.”

She was referring to the starved sailors who, daring the rough sea and fierce winds, put their faith in the hope of a better tomorrow, unwhirled the sails into unknown skies, and sailed thousands of kilometres in search of the land of spice. They were not yet colonists in the full sense of the word. They were adventurers and impoverished souls searching for money and purpose or sometimes fleeing the dire straits of life at home or the criminal past they wanted to forget. They never knew or bothered to think about their impact on the places and cultures they visited.

History of Dodo Extinction

By the 1960s, Dodos were nowhere to be seen in Mauritius. The sailors, in addition to eating them, also introduced many of their predator species to the island. This new species invasion involved dogs, monkeys, pigs, and cats. Between humans and all these animals, predators of the highest and lower rungs of the food chain, Dodos did not stand the slightest chance to survive.

The last sighting of a Dodo alive was reported from an Indian zoo. Cornish traveller, Peter Mundy described seeing two Dodos in a zoo in Surat, India. His account was one of the rare eyewitness accounts of the bird. He wrote, “Dodoes, a strange kind of fowle, twice as bigg as a Goose, that can neither flye nor swymm, being Gloven footed; a wonder how it should come thither, there being none such in any part of the world yet to be found. I saw two of them in Surat house that were from thence [Mauritius].” (as cited in Shaffer, 2013).

Mauritius had deep harbours that made it a good destination for ships to anchor. By 1638, the Dutch started settlements there. The adjacent island, Reunion, was colonised by the French briefly after. The islands were just on that path to Asia from Europe. As the settlements grew, the island was overrun with introduced animals. Along with Dodos, magnificent birds like Solitaires and giant Land Turtles were hunted and killed in thousands for meat. The pristine forests of Mauritius, which were the natural habitat of Dodos and many other endemic species, fell to the extensive logging carried out by the colonisers.

The first mention of a Dodo in a book or document was in 1599. Within 100 years from thence, the bird was extinct. This bird with its plump body, stump-like wings, large beak, and curious tail has been illustrated in thousands of books. And it has become a symbol of what humanity is doing to the planet.

Milne-Edwards, the renowned zoologist who assembled one of the existing few Dodo skeletons, wrote in so many words about the sad plight of these birds in 1875,

“These species, whose poorly developed wings made capture easy, at the same time as the tastiness of their flesh made them sought after, were bound to die out quickly” (p.20).

The ship journals from the first Dutch fleet that arrived on the coast of Mauritius in 1598 mentioned that these birds were so tame that the sailors could catch them with their hands. This tiny island’s exotic flora and fauna was not limited to the Dodos. The Mauritius ravenala, also known as Traveller’s Palm, had huge leaves that formed a sheath in the shape of a watertight pot from which one could drink water. The Mauritius Parakeet and Pink Pigeon just escaped extinction by luck surviving the loss of forests and the threat posed by predators.

The Dodos were vulnerable for one more reason than discussed above. A female Dodo laid only one egg per year. This biological feature caused the population of this species to grow only slowly. Some studies have suggested that tropical cyclones also played a role in reducing the Dodo population in Mauritius even before the sailors arrived. Still, it is a fact that Dodos were widely spotted during the Dutch and French occupation of Mauritius. After a few years from then, they were not.

In the 17th century, a group of travellers took twenty-odd Dodo birds to Europe. Around 1638, a Dodo was reported exhibited in a cage on the streets of London, the only one left of the twenty. Bontius, a famous naturalist, had written that he saw a stuffed Dodo in the house of John Tradescant, gardener for the King of England. This same stuffed bird is supposed to have been later transferred to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. Famously named Oxford Dodo, this is the only remaining specimen with skin tissue, thus carrying DNA samples.

In 1830, Georges Clark, a natural enthusiast helped assemble an entire skeleton of Dodo. Clark had discovered the bones and given them to the British Museum for further study and identification. Renowned naturalist, Sir Robert Owen, assembled the bones. Clark had chanced upon the bones from the southeastern part of the island at Mare aux Songes, a private property owned by Gaston de Bissy. Later, scientists excavated the site and recovered more Dodo bones. Using these bones, Zoologist, Milne Edwards, assembled a second skeleton. This skeleton is exhibited at the Natural History Museum, Port-Louis.

The earliest pictures of the Dodo are drawings in the manuscript of Harmans, which date from 1601 to 1603. In 1626, the Dutch painter Roelandt Savery painted a series of pictures of the bird. Another famous depiction of a Dodo is an engraving by the painter and sculptor, George Edwards. Both Savery's and Edwards' paintings are kept in the Oxford Museum.

Dodos symbolise the harm humans do to Nature. The skeletons and pictures of Dodo that we preserve caution us to be careful. If we are not, when dealing with Nature’s delicate treasures, we will impoverish Earth of many more of our exquisite fellow species.

Will Dodos be back, or Is that What We Must Do?

Amidst the hype about bringing Dodos back to life, we must not forget the many other species living on this planet, already pushed to the brink of extinction. Saving them must be the priority rather than resurrecting one or two fancy species. Protecting the existing biodiversity on earth is the most difficult job that no government or corporate entity could undertake without spreading awareness and gathering the commitment of an entire society.