Heredity, Natural Selection, and EvolutionExtinction |
How did the dodo bird become extinct? |
A bird called the dodo—native to the Mascarene Islands in the Central Indian Ocean— became totally extinct around 1800. (They became extinct on the island of Mauritius soon after 1680, on Reunion about 1750, and on Rodriguez about 1800.) Thousands were slaughtered for meat, but pigs and monkeys destroyed the dodo eggs and were probably most responsible for the dodo’s extinction.