Dodos were not so dumb after all, says study

The dodo is an extinct, flightless bird that lived on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius. Weighing about 25 kilos and about three foot tall, the dodo also looked weird largely due to its pointed beak and round head. Its size and passive nature made people attribute extremely limited intelligence to the bird’s small brain.

On Thursday, scientists determined its brain was not unusually small but rather completely in proportion to its body size. 

They figured out the dodo’s brain size and structure based on an analysis of a well-preserved skull from a museum collection. They also found the dodo may have had a better sense of smell than most birds, with an enlarged olfactory region of the brain. This trait, unusual for birds, probably let it sniff out ripe fruit to eat. 

The research suggests the dodo, rather than being stupid, boasted at least the same intelligence as its fellow members of the pigeon and dove family. 

“If we take brain size - or rather, volume, as we measured here - as a proxy for intelligence, then the dodo was as smart as a common pigeon,” palaeontologist Eugenia Gold of Stony Brook University in New York state said. “Common pigeons are actually smarter than they get credit for, as they were trained as message carriers during the world wars.”

Gold said dodos exhibited no fear of humans when people reached Mauritius in the 1500s. 

“Why would they fear something they’ve never seen? They had no natural predators on the islands before humans arrived. Because of this, sailors herded the birds onto their boats for fresh meat later in their voyages. Their willingness to be driven onto the boats is, I think, what led to people thinking they were dumb. It is rather unfair,” Gold said.

Driven into extinction largely by human hunting, the last dodo was seen in 1662.