What would dodos eat in the wild?

Thursday gives Pickwick dried fruit and marshmallows, but what would they really have eaten?

Thinking about the texture of marshmallows I can only imagine they are a susbsitute for slugs. So would a dodo in the garden be a good thing or not? Would it eat the slugs and leave the plants, or would it eat all the seedlings like the pigeons do? Not that I'm thinking of getting one for the garden, I know they're not real in our here and now, but I'd like to think that somewhere there are unperforated hostas as mine look like doilies.

I saw a show on TV once about them. They lived on Madagascar? (I'm not sure) as the flightless descendants of South East Asian pigeons. I think they ate big bugs and ripe fruit that fell to the forest floor. Apparently they fought with their beaks.



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Those who forget the pasta are doomed to reheat it.

I saw that programme. And according to my sons book about extinct animals the dodos were native to Mauritius, which is just east of Madagascar, and it's neighbouring islands, but it doesn't say anything about what it ate.

Hang on. I'll check google.....

The dodo’s diet appears to have had much in common with pigeons. It fed on various plant materials, including fruit and tough seed. Large numbers of pebbles have been found among dodo remains, which suggest that, similar to other seed-eating birds, the dodo swallowed pebbles and stored them in its gizzard (stomach) to help it crush and digest its coarse food.

There we go. I looked up 'dodo food'. It also came up with a recipe for Dodo salad, which rather intrigued me, but there are no dodos listed among the ingredients....

You know, it's a very good thing I'm vegetarian and therefore can't eat marshmallows because they contain gelatine. If that were not the case, I should have been well put off them by now. A substitute for slugs? Blech!

I actually think dodos like marshmallows because they're sweet and quite easy to eat. You couldn't give a dodo a piece of toffee, for instance. It just wouldn't be fair on the poor bird.



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Have been away camping for the weekend and according to the waistband of my jeans I've rather over done the bacon and sausage fry-ups. Logged on this morning to see what I'd missed and saw this thread....... Oh I wonder if it works I thought with my hopes raised, I love a good diet, I start a new one every Monday morning. But a diet of slugs, I don't think its gonna catch on.

Actually, naturalists are very divided as to what dodos ate; many theories abound. The problem is that beak. It's a bit over the top for eating seeds, (and way over the top for slugs); one theory is that it ate coconuts, a diet that might explain the creature's extinction, given the height of the average coconut palm and the general flightless quality of the dodo.

As for those seeking a diet that works, here it is;

Eat less and exercise more.

Next question.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

LOl @ Jon

Have you patented your diet? I think perhaps you should write a book about it; it'd be popular with folk like me who are hard of understanding in the dieting dept. Its the eat less bit that trips me up every time ;-)

Did dodos headbutt the trees to get the coconuts down?

I still laugh about that bit of LIAGB where Pickwick finally stands on one leg. Wouldn't it be especially hard for her, because she has no wings for balance?

Intrigue, in my experience Pickwick would definitely have to lean against something in order to be able to stand on one leg, a bit like a bicycle. Later models actually came fitted with a bell in fact - reportedly because they were prone to wandering, though I don't think too many people were fooled by that (the reflectors fitted to the backs of their heels further reinforced the bicycle theory)

Jon - eating less and excercising more! What sort of diet do you call that? It just doesn't cut it, I mean I can just imagine trying to float that one on a girls night out. Could turn you into a social outcast. Don't you know women bond by sharing tales of diet woe, the inexplicable combinations of food you have to eat, the terrible bad breath, the bloating, the farting, (not me, obviously, I'm never less than fragrant.) and it has to cost a lot of money. Might actually tell friends Im doing the Dodo diet - or shall I retitle it the Mauritiun Beach diet. You are such a Neanderthal. (btw what did they eat?)

Homo sapiens. Very tasty with spinach. Er .... so they tell me.



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I am very interested in the Universe. I am specialising in the Universe and everything surrounding it. - E. L. Wisty

With spinach! thats another social no-no.

I think that slugs are a very poor substitute for marshmallows.

I don't care what anyone says. Spinach is nice. I'll have mine on top of a pizza with a little ricotta (not too much - ricotta can be rather heavy in large quantities), or perhaps just done the Roman way with raisins and pine nuts as an accompaniment to fettucine alfredo.

And "diet", in the sense of a weird regime intended to help people lose weight, is a four-letter word which should be Bowdlerised in polite company!



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That which does not kill us makes us stranger.
(Llewelyn the dragon, Ozy and Millie)

Sarah

Always try to avoid 'polite' company.

I can eat spinach (particularly spinach gnocchi) now, but had a bad experience with it at a young age. I'm sure that finding some boiled ladybirds in the boiled spinach lead to mental scarring.

and I'll bet the ladybirds were a bit traumatised too! Oh yuk, who was responsible for this dirty deed, is it someone you could sue?

I've just bumped up to the top of the Fforum a thread from April on dodo diets, with some various information found on the web.



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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

Just to make it absolutely clear, I was in no way intending the word diet to convey the sense of weight reduction, that would be silly, dodos are meant to be rounded, as am I.

Jon's weight reducing diet isn't quite right, as eating less promotes misery. The prescription should be;

Eat what you like and exercise a heck of a lot more.

That way you are exercising all the hours God sends and don't have time to eat much anyway. I'm not very good at diets, I lost six stones by being ill, and got better and put them back on again. Everyone said how well I looked when I was thin, but I was as ill as I have ever been and it wasn't nice.

MissPrint, I'm totally with you on that one! I lost 2 stone through depression & associated illnesses a few years ago. Since then I've got my life completely back on track AND given up smoking - and have quincequontly put on about 4 stone, a net gain of two stone (obviously, derrr!). I'm undeniably fitter and healthier now than I have been for any time in the past 15 years - and yet still well-meaning friends keep suggesting that I diet and propping up books by Dr Atkins on my desk when all I want to read are Mr Fforde's! Surely it's more important to be happy and healthy than to confirm to some popular perception?

Um, I'm not sure where I was going with that now. Sorry - rant over and I promise to stay on topic in future.