For millions of years, nine species of large, flightless birds known as moas (Dinornithiformes) thrived in New Zealand. Then, about 600 years ago, they abruptly went extinct. Now, a new genetic study of moa fossils points to humankind as the sole perpetrator of the birds’ extinction.

Moa were large, flightless birds that lived in New Zealand until about 500 years ago. There were nine species of these extinct birds.

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The many species of moa are thought to have descended from a common ancestor of other large living flightless birds that evolved on separate southern landmasses when Gondwana broke up: the ostrich in Africa; the emu and cassowary in Australia; the rhea in South America; and New Zealand’s kiwi.

The research, which is the result of a long-term collaboration between scientists from Denmark, Australia and New Zealand, reveals that the giant bird was eradicated by contact with humans only, and that neither volcanic eruptions, climate changes or diseases occuring before human arrival had anything to do with it, as …

The dodo was extinct by 1681, the Réunion solitaire by 1746, and the Rodrigues solitaire by about 1790. The dodo is frequently cited as one of the most well-known examples of human-induced extinction and also serves as a symbol of obsolescence with respect to human technological progress.

The combination of human exploitation and introduced species significantly reduced dodo bird populations. Within 100 years of the arrival of humans on Mauritius, the once abundant dodo bird was a rare bird. The last dodo bird was killed in 1681.

While there are no intact dodo cells left today, scientists have retrieved bits of dodo DNA from a specimen stored at the University of Oxford.

According to this article, dodos were large pigeons, and did not taste good. (Subscription required). It wasn’t that they were hunted to extinction, it was the rats and pigs that did them in, by eating the eggs from their nests.

Though the dodo has historically been considered fat and clumsy, it is now thought to have been well-adapted for its ecosystem. The first recorded mention of the dodo was by Dutch sailors in 1598. In the following years, the bird was hunted by sailors and invasive species, while its habitat was being destroyed.

Most people are familiar with the sad story of the dodo. This plump, flightless bird was so tasty and so tame that it was hunted to extinction within a century by Dutch sailors arriving on the shores of Mauritius.

The Dodo Bird Didn’t ‘Taste Like Chicken’ There’s no particular reason the meat of the dodo would have been unsavory to human beings; after all, this bird subsisted on the tasty fruits, nuts, and roots native to Mauritius and possibly shellfish.

Human faeces taste bitter because of bile, which is secreted by the liver and stored in the gall bladder. The food crumbs left inside faeces are tasteless. We assume that the taste of faces is relatively caused by the scent.

Top 10 Extinct Animals

1. Sabre-toothed Cat. Often called Sabre-toothed Tigers or Sabre-toothed Lions, they existed 55 million to 11,700 years ago.
2. Woolly Mammoth. An enormous mammal, believed to be closely related to the modern-day elephant.
3. Dodo.
4. Great Auk.
5. Stellers Sea Cow.
6. Tasmanian Tiger.
7. Passenger Pigeon.
8. Pyrenean Ibex.

Dodos liked to eat rocks, but that’s just the 1st course. They really ate fruit, nuts, seeds, bulbs, and roots. It has also been suggested that the dodo might have eaten crabs and shellfish, like their relatives the crowned pigeons. The rocks they ate help them digest.

Despite the popular belief that dodo meat was inedible because of its revolting taste, dodos were eaten by these early settlers, and even considered to be a delicacy by some. However, there is no evidence to support the idea that dodos were eaten to extinction.

Western Black Rhinoceros

World Wildlife Day 2020: The Indian Cheetah and Sumatran Rhino were among some of the species that went extinct in 2019.

• Sumatran Rhino.
• Chinese paddlefish.
• Yangtze giant softshell turtle.
• Indian Cheetah.
• Spix Macaw.
• Indochinese tiger.

Koalas are considered vulnerable to extinction—just a step above endangered—and reports indicate that between 350 and a thousand koalas have been found dead so far in fire-devastated zones of northern New South Wales. But, experts say, we are not looking at the death of a species—yet.

KOALAS. Koala-on-koala violence is generally pretty mild, but they have been known to go after dogs and even humans. For example: In December 2014, Mary Anne Forster of South Australia found herself at the receiving end of a vicious bite after trying to protect her two dogs from an aggressive koala.