What did the Dodo ACTUALLY look like? What colour were its feathers? Or its skin? What configuration of scales did it possess on its feet? And did it have molts and whatnot as it aged and when the seasons came and went? And what did Dodo babies look like for that matter?!
Unfortunately, the Dodo is dead. As a dodo. So, we have to rely on other means. This means looking at remaining skeletons and museum specimens, contemporary illustrations based on live animals, and depictions made by travelers (specifically the ones that depict the actual birds and not how the meat tasted like).
The following illustrations and artistic depictions (unless stated otherwise) are from the english Wikipedia page on the Dodo , so take all of this with a grain of salt.
This is probably the best-known depiction of the Dodo, and what comes to mind for most people when thinking of the Dodo. This painting is referred to as “Edward’s Dodo”, and it was made Roelant Savery in 1626. This is a beautiful painting. However, there is a problem. The bird is chunky, and not in a good way. It doesn’t look like a healthy wild animal, but an overfed and bloated chicken or goose. This may not be the best depiction of a Dodo in its natural state.
So alas, we have to turn to contemporary depictions. And besides from how it tasted (not that good, apparently), how do they depict the Dodo?
van Warwijck (1598) Depicts the Dodo as follows:
“... a kind, conspicuous for their size, larger than our swans, with huge heads only half covered with skin as if clothed with a hood. These birds lack wings, in the place of which 3 or 4 blackish feathers protrude. The tail consists of a few soft incurved feathers, which are ash coloured...”
From this, we get a pretty good idea of the size of the Dodo, as well as details of the wing and tail feathers, which here are descibed as “ash coloured”, so maybe light or dark gray, and not white, Like they are usually depicted as.
Herbert (1634) did a very detailed depiction of the Dodo, which reads as follows:
“... her body is round and fat, few weigh less than fifty pound.... Her visage darts forth melancholy, as sensible of Nature's injury in framing so great a body to be guided with complemental wings, so small and impotent, that they serve only to prove her bird. The half of her head is naked seeming covered with a fine vail, her bill is crooked downwards, in midst is the nostril, from which part to the end is a light green, mixed with pale yellow tincture; her eyes are small and like to Diamonds, round and rowling; her clothing downy feathers, her train three small plumes, short and inproportionable...”
This description is not only quite apt and not that far from an excellent depiction of any animal with admirable attention to detail, this description rings a bell, as it’s surprisingly similar to a contemporary artistic depiction.
Specifically, this one. It was made by Indian artist Ustad Mansur around 1625. The bird in the middle is, of course, a Dodo. And surprisingly, some details mentioned by Herbert are visible, especially on the head region. The animal is also a whole lot slimmer than Edward’s Dodo, and has a very different earth-toned colour scheme on the body. The other birds on the painting are identifiable even today (Clock-wise from the upper left: Blue-crowned Hanging-parrot ( Loriculus galgulus), Western Tragopan (Tragopan melanocephlus), Painted sandgrouse (Pterocles indicus), and Bar-headed Goose (Anser Indicus)), so we can be pretty certain to say that the depiction is reliable and likely accurate, so we can assume that the painting depicts a live, adult, healthy Dodo. Most modern paleoartists use this depiction as a “default” Dodo.
The depiction however, has a surprise up its wings. The Dodo in the painting doesn’t have the curved tail feathers seen in most depictions, which curiously is also mentioned in descriptions of the bird. There may be many reasons for this. Maybe the bird is female and thus doesn’t have them (unlikely, because pigeons have next to none sexual dimorphism), maybe the bird is molting (i guess?!), or perhaps the zookeepers cut them off (some aviaries do that to pheasants,or maybe it was the stress?). Maybe we can get a better picture by looking at more contemporary depictions.
These sketches were found in the travel journal of the dutch ship, Gelderland. These were made around 1601, and are attributed to Joris Laerle, while the original artist is unknown as of writing this. These were apparently made of live and recently killed individuals. The head on the far right is especially beautiful, and the depictions on the left give a picture of the Dodos body structure as a mix of plump and lean. However, the tail is, again, either a little stump, or is not depicted at all. Maybe the Dodo never had curved tail feathers, or the birds depicted were molting. Who knows.
Contemporary depictions don’t stop there. Here is a painting made of a mounted specimen (unsurprisingly; it has that vibe of poor taxidermy) from the collections of Emperor Rudolph II, made by Jacob Hoefnagel in the 1600s. The animal is very dark in colour, and if we assume that the animal depicted by Mansur is an average individual, this one may be melanistic. Thus it may not be surprising that such a specimen was possessed by an emperor.
There is also this depiction of a live individual made by Cornelis Saftwelen in 1638. The bird is quite different from Mansur’s bird. The feathers seem a whole lot shaggier and a bit unkempt, the bare skin on the face is of a bluish hue rather than a more umber color, and the “hood” is not clear. Also, the eyes have a dark iris, while the eyes of Mansur’s Dodo, and those in the descriptions, has a light iris. Why are these two depictions so different? Well, a more unkempt appearance, incomplete bareskin features on the face and a dark iris are sometimes features found in juvenile birds that are almost fully grown, and are slowly molting into adult plumes. So perhaps this individual here may be a juvenile, and Mansur’s depiction perhaps represents an adult.
But enough depictions. Do we have any hard proof of the Dodo today? As it turns out, there are a lot of subfossil Dodo bones, and thus multiple skeletal mounts, the one in The Natural history Museum in London being of particular fame. Unfortunately, no skins or mounted specimens survive today. Oxford University used to have a mount, which was promptly tossed in a fire due to all the mold it had accumulated. Fortunately, a head and foot were salvaged from the fire. The foot has since been lost (bugger), so the Oxford head is the only skin left of the Dodo.
Artistic rendering of the Oxford Dodo head and foot, by Yours Truly. Based on illustrations of the specimens.
The musculature and heads of the Dodo, based on the skulls and skeletons of Dodoes, musculature of pigeons, and the oxford head by Yours Truly. Kind of rough, but you get the idea.
And finally, after all that, here are some depictions of Dodo busts based on some of the paintings from above. They only give a rough idea of the Dodo’s appearance, since these are artistic interpretations and not photographs. However, until we get a time machine, these depictions are all we have, and until that time, the appearance of the Dodo will still largely remain a mystery.
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