The dodo is an extinct bird, very heavily built and quite unable to fly. It belonged to a small family of birds confined to the islands of Mauritius, Réunion and Rodriguez in the Indian Ocean. It had a large, hooked beak, short stubby legs and rudimentary wings. Clumsy and defenceless, the dodo was an easy prey to the sailors who landed on the islands in the seventeenth century. Those birds which were not destroyed by human hand were attacked by other animals introduced by man to the islands, The appearance of the dodo is known today from contemporary drawings, from relics of stuffed specimenes and from remains of skeletons dug up on the islands.
