What if the Dodo bird was still alive in modern day?

What if the Dodo was still alive and well in this day and age? Is it possible that it could have been domesticated? A current household pet? Look at it.
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I kinda would like one as a pet. Any other thoughts?
 
It was a ill-tempted, foul tasting, stupid and slow bird, if it survived it would be a miracle, but it would help on the local ecology, as it was a key species.
 
I bit doubt that dodo would be domesticated. Not much reason to do that. At least not because of its meat. It might be national bird of Mauritius but hardly anything more.

Theres a slim chance it becomes a cultural icon for Mauritius the way the Kiwi is for New Zealand

Perhaps air forces of Mauritius would use that their mascot.
 
Having dodos survive into the modern day is a very difficult proposition, if not completely impossible for a timeline as we know it. Let's break it down into what we understand about the dodo, and why it died out.

Contrary to how it is generally portrayed, what we know about dodos (which is a lot less than one would expect given the fame of the animal: partial remains from four specimens brought to London, some written anecdotes and drawings from sailors, a couple of paintings of animals in menageries, and some subfossil remains from a single swamp in Mauritus) suggests that they weren't nearly as dysfunctional as commonly made out to be. For one, they don't seem to have been (exceedingly) fat and sluggish birds in their natural habitat; their leg bones indicate at least some capacity for fairly fast movement, and the obesity seen in depictions of the few live specimens brought to Europe is nowadays believed to be the result of overfeeding of the birds. While they seem to be gluttonous when faced with fruit as indicated by written sailor records, the fact that Mauritus has an annual dry/wet cycle indicates that this was an adaptational feature to encourage birds to gorge on fruit when it fell at the end of the wet season, giving them fat reserves to rely on during the drought. Birds in a captive situation with reliable food would not have to stop gorging themselves, or go through a starvation period, making them get as fat as those depicted in the more famous paintings of specimens imported to European menageries.

Their lack of fear towards larger predators is a bigger issue, and ties into the big one with dodos: their lack of adaptation to deal with non-native insular animals. Pressure from actual humans on dodos was fairly minimal, in the sense of most island endemics - while they were easily hunted by sailors, their flesh was universally regarded as distasteful, and no records exist of sailors making attempt to collect their eggs or young (as was the case with seabirds on islands where they nested en masse). The main problem, and the main reason they seem to have gone extinct so quickly as they did, was the introduction of various invasive animals to Mauritus by sailors that either killed the adult birds (dogs), ate chicks (cats), or most importantly, ate their eggs (pigs and rats). Not much is known about dodo reproduction, but they seem to have followed the common trend for flightless island birds of only one or two offspring per nesting season. While young dodos seem to have grown very fast compared to other flightless island endemics (growing to independence seemingly before the end of their first wet season, in time for the drought), tiny clutch sizes coupled with a lack of any defenses of nests from predators (as well as cats and dogs hunting young) meant that eventually there was simply no way for the birds to reproduce effectively. Coupled with the rest of the island's ecosystem being massively disrupted at the same time, and the recipe makes for a rapid extinction.

Moving into how this ties into their extinction (or how it could be prevented), there really isn't a way for this to be avoided unless the Age of Exploration as we know it is averted. Any sort of naval exploration would lead to the introduction of rats (and by extension ship cats) to the island, and setting up of stations or bases would invariably lead to some other animals being brought along to allow for some self-sustenance. Unless Mauritus simply isn't discovered until after some form of conservation ethos develops to prevent this (which is pretty much ASB, especially when considering both the value of the naval trade routes in the region and the dodo's role in developing the idea of human-caused extinction among the public), they are going to be killed off on Mauritus at some point following human discovery.

There is one potential out, though - a captive population being established outside of Mauritus, presumably in some form of royal menagerie. There is precedence for this (and not only with the specimens brought back to Europe - a painting exists of a dodo in a menagerie alongside native Indian birds that has been linked to the menagerie of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir at some point in the 1620's to 1630's; this is incidentally generally believed to be the most accurate depiction of a healthy dodo in existence), so in theory it is physically possible for a breeding population to have been transported to a suitable menagerie and maintained for some centuries until conservation ideology develops and some can be reintroduced to Mauritus. This sort of conservation has actually happened once, with the Pere David's deer; the problem now is with the dodo's (presumably) specialized reproductive systems and diet, which would make captive husbandry difficult in a non-native environment. This could in theory be worked around, but it would be hard to justify within the bounds of realism.

In the end they do have a shot at survival (if only in captivity in a foreign land), but realistically there is sadly not much of a way to keep them alive unless one rewrites the history of maritime exploration and conservation.

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It was a ill-tempted, foul tasting, stupid and slow bird, if it survived it would be a miracle, but it would help on the local ecology, as it was a key species.

Foul tasting? Or fowl-tasting? :)

Didn't stop the sailors from hunting it IIRC. I must admit, the 8-year-old zoologist/ornithologist in me is very interested in such ecological PODs.
 
Theres a slim chance it becomes a cultural icon for Mauritius the way the Kiwi is for New Zealand

The Kiwi also tastes terrible, apparently (very stringy).

Speaking of our native birds, I suspect the only thing that saved the Kakapo from becoming like the Dodo is the comparatively late settlement of New Zealand (conservation efforts were a thing in the 20th century in a way they weren't in the 17th).
 
Foul tasting? Or fowl-tasting? :)

Didn't stop the sailors from hunting it IIRC. I must admit, the 8-year-old zoologist/ornithologist in me is very interested in such ecological PODs.
The Dodo was also known in Dutch as "walgvogel", which translate as disgusting bird. So yes, it tasted terrible.
 
The easiest way to avert their extinction is to have the proto-Malagasy or another Austronesian group settle the islands and have the dodo become a bit of a status animal like the peacock. Maybe people initially hunt it for meat (if you're hungry you'll eat anything) and with the dodo soon rare and near extinction, it becomes a bird which only chiefs and other high status individuals can keep. It doesn't seem like it would be too hard to domesticate given its behaviors, so soon selective breeding can make some interesting dodo breeds--fatter, more colorful, etc., and maybe even one with decent meat. These dodos would be discovered when the Arabs show up in the islands to trade with the locals. Some would be imported to the Middle East and become a curiousity there.
 
What if the Dodo was still alive and well in this day and age? Is it possible that it could have been domesticated? A current household pet? Look at it.
View attachment 432664
I kinda would like one as a pet. Any other thoughts?
Very Low Reproduction rate. Would be interesting to see a few surviving shipping and successfully introduced in exotic gardens of royals and nobility.
 
The Kiwi also tastes terrible, apparently (very stringy).

Speaking of our native birds, I suspect the only thing that saved the Kakapo from becoming like the Dodo is the comparatively late settlement of New Zealand (conservation efforts were a thing in the 20th century in a way they weren't in the 17th).

Isn't the kakapo seriously endangered at the moment?
 
Having dodos survive into the modern day is a very difficult proposition, if not completely impossible for a timeline as we know it. Let's break it down into what we understand about the dodo, and why it died out.

There is one potential out, though - a captive population being established outside of Mauritus, presumably in some form of royal menagerie.

I think this is an interesting idea, and could be a butterfly of Mauritius becoming a colony for a monarchical government rather than a Republic before the dodo becomes extinct.

Possibilities include a royalist Holland setting the Mauritius, or another European power like the Portuguese or French (arriving ahead of OTL's schedule, presumably). Of course a non-western power is possible, such as a maritime-focused Indian power.
 
Theres a slim chance it becomes a cultural icon for Mauritius the way the Kiwi is for New Zealand

The Dodo already is like that in a way for Mauritius. It's the most well known animal from Mauritius and you see it used a lot being used as a national symbol, especially in touristy things.

I wonder if the Dodo would actually be less well known if it survived, since it's mostly known for going extinct
 
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What if the Dodo was still alive and well in this day and age? Is it possible that it could have been domesticated? A current household pet? Look at it.
View attachment 432664
I kinda would like one as a pet. Any other thoughts?
They would soon develop an intelligence far more greater than our own and take over the world by launching a Dodo Revolution. After that the Dodo Republic would be declared with direct rule from Mauritius over the entire earth.
 
I have a short story in a collection of 'oddball fiction' that has surviving dodos... sorta. The narrator of the story runs across a woman who recognized a painting of a dodo he was perusing, mentions her family had had them on her farm (in the USA) when she was a girl. After some investigation, the narrator finds that the woman's distant ancestor had visited Mauritius and thought that dodos were neat for some reason, and brought some birds and eggs to America. His descendants continued to raise them after he died, keeping it a family tradition. As the narrator tracked down the story, he found the abandoned farm and piles of dodo skeletons and egg shells. At the end, in a bizarre twist, one of the last ancestors years before had been appointed to some business position in Mauritius... and he sold the farm and butchered all the dodos for one last grand feast...
 
I have a short story in a collection of 'oddball fiction' that has surviving dodos... sorta. The narrator of the story runs across a woman who recognized a painting of a dodo he was perusing, mentions her family had had them on her farm (in the USA) when she was a girl. After some investigation, the narrator finds that the woman's distant ancestor had visited Mauritius and thought that dodos were neat for some reason, and brought some birds and eggs to America. His descendants continued to raise them after he died, keeping it a family tradition. As the narrator tracked down the story, he found the abandoned farm and piles of dodo skeletons and egg shells. At the end, in a bizarre twist, one of the last ancestors years before had been appointed to some business position in Mauritius... and he sold the farm and butchered all the dodos for one last grand feast...
Sounds cool, and depressing
 
This^^^^^

It was basically a turkey-sized flightless pigeon that dealt with regular glut-famine conditions and had a low population cap. Mauritius has no native land mammals, so there were no serious egg predators pre-contact, and on top of that the island's position in the Indian Ocean means it's very seasonal. The also-extinct Rodrigues solitaire (described by a group of French Huguenots who landed on Rodrigues temporarily in the 17th century)was similarly a large flightless pigeon and probably suffered similar constraints.

Essentially, they were the largest terrestrial animals on a small, highly seasonal, remote island. Those always die fast when Humans arrive.
 
How did they taste? Dropping a few on islands across the Indian Ocean as a way to grab an easy meal might work, given we literally hunted them to extinction.
 
Isn't the kakapo seriously endangered at the moment?

It's been seriously endangered since European settlement. There's 126 of them at the moment, but that's a huge step up from the 50 or so in the 1990s. Interestingly, they thought for decades that saving the Kakapo was a lost cause, since they literally couldn't find any females. The discovery of a female Kakapo was really exciting for conservationists...

(Also, come to think of it... maybe the other advantage the Kakapo had over the Dodo is that New Zealand is much bigger than Mauritius - more places to hide. There are places in Fiordland where no human has ever set foot).
 
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