Dreaming about dodos

I have never told anyone that I often dream about dodos. They are not beautiful dreams, are nightmares! And I always have the same sense of guilt, of helplessness for not knowing what those animals are looking for me. They no longer exist but it is as if they were here, in my dreams. So I think I should talk about them to exorcise them (in English because my nightmares are in English).

The history of its discovery, its strange appearance and the idea that it was a stupid bird, have made the dodo an important cultural reference. That animal has become the extinct species icon due to human predation and its tragic destiny has inspired the defense of endangered animals in the world.

Nobody knows what the dodos’ origins is and, because of their early extinction, it is difficult to have an exact description of them. However, scientists have been able to define their appearance by ancient drawings and all bones found in their natural habitat. So, dodos were non-flying birds from Mauritius, had three feet – four inches of height and ten kilos of weight approximately. Dodos had beaks very long with a hook-shape tip that probably allowed then to break coconuts and branches.

Hence, they lived peacefully in their island until the European conquerors landed in those territories (located in the Indian Ocean, near Madagascar and South Africa) and that encounter meant the annihilation of the dodos. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British people established Mauritius from 15^th Century and, during the occupation, hunters killed thousands and thousands of birds because they ambitioned their majestic plumage. Finally, the extinction of the dodos was consumed when the Europeans introduced species that destroyed the local ecosystem, as dogs, pigs, cats, cows, etc.  

Eurocentric thinking has justified the extinction of that specie due to its inability to involve. For that reason –they say- the bird was never be able to protect itself. The prusian Artur Schopenhauer referred to the bird as “didus ineptus” and he said: “Its extinction was due to the fact that the bird did not have the will to develop some natural form of protection. In the absence of an appropriate body, the bird had to develop enough intelligence to survive, as the rodents did”. 

But, that was a historic lie similar to the one that Spanish built when they debated about the soul of the indigenous people. Recent research has determined that birds were very intelligent, lived in community and worked hard as ants despite not having strong or large wings. Sir Thomas Herbert dedicated a dramatic dedication to those birds: “they have a melancholy countenance, as if they were sensitive to the injustice of nature by modeling a body, so massive, destined to be led by complementary wings certainly unable to lift it from the ground”. 

As a result of predation, dodos became extinct in 17^th Century. There are seven preserved dodo eggs in museums around the world, the most famous is established in Easy London from South Africa. There are few skeletons of those birds in the planet and there is only one mummified dodo at Oxford University.  Nowadays some scientists want to clone the dodo in the future but I think that it is not necessary, they had their moment and (now) we have to remember them to take care of nature.

Finally, I want to emphasize the cultural romanticism that was created through the dodos and their memory. Dodo is present in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in the cartoons of Looney Tunes or and famous movies like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. This is a sad story because dodos were only appreciated when they died, for example that bird is the symbol of the Jersey Zoo. 

I hope we appreciated our andean condors now. That bird is our majestic bird, our past and our present (¡I saw them flying over the mountains!). We must ensure its preservation in the future.

I write for myself, for my future self, because memory is exhausted, for a need to register everything before everything ends. (I)