New Cute Dodo Soft Toy Available from Everything Dinosaur
Everything Dinosaur has added a cute and very cuddly Dodo soft toy to the company’s soft toy range. Although not a dinosaur in the strictest sense, (would you believe an avian-dinosaur)? The Dodo soft toy is a very welcome addition to the range of dinosaur and prehistoric animal soft toys.
A Soft Toy Dodo from Everything Dinosaur
Dodo soft toy.
Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur
Dodos and Dinosaurs
With its shiny black eyes, bright yellow beak and little wings, this soft toy Dodo is suitable for children from three years of age. Even extinct animals need love to! The soft toy Dodo stands an impressive thirty centimetres tall and it is made from very soft material indeed, one might even say that this is a super-soft, soft toy.
To view Everything Dinosaur’s range of prehistoric animal and dinosaur soft toys: Soft Toy Dinosaurs.
Getting to Grips with a Giant Pigeon
The Dodo, scientific name Raphus cucullatus was a member of the pigeon family. Growing to the size of a turkey, it was the largest type of pigeon known. Based on contemporary descriptions and notes from scientists who had the opportunity to study this bird before its extinction, the Dodo is described as being chubby with a rounded body covered in grey coloured feathers. The head and beak were naked of feathers, the bill was large and the mouth could open surprisingly wide. The legs and feet were yellow and this bird moved rather slowly and clumsily. Contemporary reports suggest that this bird gave a loud squawk when alarmed.
Sadly, as any budding young palaeontologist will tell you, within a century or so of its discovery by Dutch sailors on the island of Mauritius, the Dodo was extinct. The reason for its demise remains uncertain. It had been thought that visitors to Mauritius had killed the bird for food, but there are numerous accounts of the bird’s flesh tasting “oily” and being very unpalatable. More likely, rats, pigs and cats introduced to the island by European settlers devastated the Dodo population by destroying nests and eating young birds and eggs.
A Symbol of Extinction
In 1693, the French explorer and naturalist Francois Legaut visited the last known refuge of the Dodo on the East Indian island. He found no trace of Dodos. This comical-looking bird has become a symbol for extinction, hence the phrase “as dead as a dodo”. The Dodo had died out in less than one hundred years after mankind encountered it.
We hope you like our Dodo soft toy, it is rather lovable!
Have you guys heard about the new discovery about dodo birds suggesting that they weren’t as stupid as commonly believed? I thought it was pretty interesting that the discovery was announced the very day you guys published this article!