Download Free The Dodos Did It Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Dodos Did It and write the review.

A brilliantly funny story about dodos, a dinosaur, and being VERY careful what you wish for, from the creator of Nine Lives Newton. Jack doesn’t just like dodos, he LOVES them. So when his dearest wish for a pet dodo comes true, surely Jack will be the happiest he’s ever been, EVER. Unless, of course, Jack wishes for more and more dodos and his new pets cause complete chaos, and no one believes that the dodos did it because dodos don’t exist and everyone blames Jack for everything. Maybe it's time for Jack to think about wishing for something completely different . . .
The most comprehensive book to date about these two famously extinct birds.
Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction? In our age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into island-like fragments by human activity, the implications of this question are more urgent than ever. Over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed the threads of island biogeography on a globe-encircling journey of discovery.
It took less than a hundred years of human influence in Mauritius to wipe out the Dodo. The delicate balance of nature was suddenly tipped and became a threat to the survival of the Dodo, which had reigned supreme on this island for thousands of years. For nearly two hundred years after its extinction, the Dodo was forgotten, and there were some doubts as to whether it actually lived at all. It seemed that these strange birds had only been part of the imagination and exaggeration of sailors. Today, the once remote island of Mauritius is home top over a million people of European, African, Indian and Chinese origin. It can boast of being one of the most stable democratic countries in the world and it is host to thousands of tourists who find shops full of Dodos in many forms, shapes and sizes. Yet, there is an unfortunate lack of information about this island's unique national icon. This book allows the reader to examine various eyewitness writings, drawings, paintings and skeletal remains, which depict the Dodo as it actually was, and helps us to understand how it was driven to extinction. It also traces what happened after the final demise of the bird, and how worldwide evidence was pieced together to provide a reasonable idea of how the Dodo lived and died.--Back cover.
"Describes the characteristics, food, habitat, behavior, and extinction of dodos"--
The Mascarene islands in the southern Indian Ocean - Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues - were once home to an extraordinary range of birds and reptiles. Evolving on these isolated volcanic islands in the absence of mammalian predators or competitors, the land was dominated by giant tortoises, parrots, skinks and geckos, burrowing boas, flightless rails & herons, and of course (in Mauritius) the Dodo. Uninhabited and only discovered in the 1500s, colonisation by European settlers in the 1600s led to dramatic changes in the ecology of the islands; the birds and tortoises were slaughtered indiscriminately while introduced rats, cats, pigs and monkeys destroyed their eggs, the once-extensive forests logged, and invasive introduced plants from all over the tropics devastated the ecosystem. The now-familiar icon of extinction, the Dodo, was gone from Mauritius within 50 years of human settlement, and over the next 150 years many of the Mascarenes' other native vertebrates followed suit. The product of over 30 years research by Anthony Cheke, Lost Land of the Dodo provides a comprehensive yet hugely enjoyable account of the story of the islands' changing ecology, interspersed with human stories, the islands' biogeographical anomalies, and much else. Many French publications, old and new, especially for Réunion, are discussed and referenced in English for the first time. The book is richly illustrated with maps and contemporary illustrations of the animals and their environment, many of which have rarely been reprinted before. Illustrated box texts look in detail at each extinct vertebrate species, while Julian Hume's superb colour plates bring many of the extinct birds to life. Lost Land of the Dodo provides the definitive account of this tragic yet remarkable fauna, and is a must-read for anyone interested in islands, their ecology and the history of our relationship with the world around us.
Using the history of the concept of extinction with the dodo as a case study, Pinto-Correia carefully weaves together story fragments to give a cohesive eye-opening view of 17th century exploration and the grave ramifications it had for the survival and extinction of many species. More importantly, she shows us the intellectual underpinnings of the old view that it was acceptable for some animals to die out. Within this narrative, we can see what the modern view of the dodo tells us about the history of our changing understanding and valuation of nature and our place in it. Strong writing, powered by lively historical anecdotes and sober insights into human behavior, makes this beautifully illustrated book a page-turner to the end.
Presents the names, physical characteristics, and places of origin of a variety of extinct animals, arranged chronologically into eras, periods, and epochs, and discusses times of mass extinction.
The story of the dodo is a classic of evolution and extinction equal in fascination to that of the dinosaur or the saber-toothed tiger. Unlike these, however, the dodo was the first recorded example of an extinction that was, in all probability, entirely caused by humans. Humankind coexisted with the dodo between 1598 and 1681 and then the dodo was gone, hunted to extinction, unable to escape the new predators that arrived in ships on the isolated island later known as Mauritius. The giant pigeon, for this was what the dodo was, evolved from ancestors that had populated the island millions of years before in the Pleistocene period, when Mauritius was far adrift of where it lies today. The pigeons colonized an island paradise abundant with food, free of any terrestrial mammalian predators. Over millions of years they lost their instinct for danger. They also lost the ability to fly, and grew bulky with sturdy running legs. For the 17th-century sailors who arrived and settled on the island, they were easy to kill and as tasty as the turtles the sailors also caught and ate. The sailors introduced domestic animals and rat as well, competitors for the dodos' habitat. So much about the dodo is unknown and will never be known, and yet, the dodo engenders much speculation.The Dodo: Extinction in Paradiseexplores the science and the mythology, the history, archaeology, and legend, as well as the dodo's place in art and literature.