Species profile
Raphus cucullatus
Dodo
EX · Extinct — Extinct — no living individuals remain
About this species
Dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Extinct. The dodo vanished within a century of humans reaching Mauritius in 1598 — a flightless pigeon that had never faced predators and showed no fear of people. The overall trend remains uncertain or is not applicable, so it should not be inferred from a small number of observations.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with terrestrial, island. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. Sailors' accounts and a few bones are almost all that remain; our idea of what the dodo looked like comes largely from second-hand paintings. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
The phrase dead as a dodo entered the language because the bird became the first famous symbol of human-caused extinction. The catalogue records 2 principal pressures for this profile: Invasive species, Hunting. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Direct protection needs to combine enforcement with conflict prevention, demand reduction and local benefits that make coexistence viable. Biosecurity, health surveillance and careful management of small populations help contain risks that can spread rapidly. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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