Dodos - Cultural Significance

Cultural Significance

The Dodo's significance as one of the best-known extinct animals and its singular appearance led to its use in literature and popular culture as a symbol of an outdated concept or object, as in the expression "dead as a Dodo," which has come to mean unquestionably dead or obsolete. Similarly, the phrase "to go the way of the Dodo" means to become extinct or obsolete, to fall out of common usage or practice, or to become a thing of the past. In 1865, the same year that George Clark started to publish reports about excavated Dodo fossils, the newly vindicated bird was featured as a character in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is thought that he included the Dodo because he identified with it and had adopted the name as a nickname for himself because of his stammer, which made him accidentally introduce himself as "Do-do-dodgson", his legal surname. The book's popularity made the Dodo a well-known icon of extinction.

Today, the Dodo appears frequently in works of popular fiction and is used as a mascot for many kinds of products, especially in Mauritius. The Dodo appears as a supporter on the coat of arms of Mauritius. It is also use as a watermark on all Mauritian rupee banknote. A smiling Dodo is the symbol of the Brasseries de Bourbon, a popular brewer on Réunion, whose emblem displays the white species once thought to have lived there.

The Dodo is used to promote the protection of endangered species by many environmental organisations, such as the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the Durrell Wildlife Park. In 2011, the nephilid spider Nephilengys dodo, which inhabits the same woods as the Dodo once did, was named after the bird to raise awareness of the urgent need for protection of the Mauritius biota. The name Dodo has also been immortalized by scientists naming genetic elements, honoring the Dodo's flightless nature. A fruitfly gene within a region of a chromosome required for flying ability was named "dodo". In addition, a defective transposable element family from Phytophthora infestans was named "dodo" as it contained mutations that eliminated the element's ability to jump to new locations in a chromosome.

In 2009, a previously unpublished 17th-century Dutch illustration of a Dodo went for sale at Christie's and was expected to sell for £6,000. It is unknown whether the illustration was based on a specimen or on a previous image. It sold for £44,450.

A supposed last living dodo named Polly is a main leitmotif in the 2012 British-American animated film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, based on the Gideon Defoe The Pirates! book series.

The poet Hilaire Belloc included the following poem about the Dodo in his Bad Child's Book of Beasts from 1896:

The Dodo used to walk around,
And take the sun and air.
The sun yet warms his native ground –
The Dodo is not there!

The voice which used to squawk and squeak
Is now for ever dumb –
Yet may you see his bones and beak
All in the Mu-se-um.