The dodo vanished from Mauritius within about a century of human arrival. After 4 million years without land predators, introduced rats, pigs, cats, and crab-eating macaques devastated ground nests. The likely last wild sighting was in 1662 by Dutch sailor Volkert Everts on an offshore islet. 🦤💔
Dodo extinction on Mauritius driven by introduced species within a century
Key facts
- Vice Admiral Warwyck's Dutch expedition landed on Mauritius in 1598, naming it after Maurice of Nassau
- Mauritius had evolved without land predators for over 4 million years before human arrival
- Introduced species including rats, pigs, dogs, cats, and crab-eating macaques devastated dodo nests on the ground
- In 1638, François Cauche described still-observable dodos, noting they laid one large egg in ground nests
- In February 1662, Dutch sailor Volkert Everts found dodos on an offshore islet, likely the last wild sighting
- Macaques are believed to have been the primary nest raiders on a scale no hunter could match
- By the early 1700s, when the Dutch abandoned Mauritius, most large land vertebrates had vanished
Sources
Mauritius 1598: The Dutch Landing That Named an Islandivoox.com
In 1598, a Dutch fleet led by Admiral Wybrand van Warwijck made an unplanned landfall on an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean.
Dutch Mauritiusen.wikipedia.org
In 1598, a Dutch expedition consisting of eight ships set sail from the port of Texel (Netherlands) under the orders of admirals Jacob Cornelisz van Neck and ...
A Concise History of Dutch Mauritius, 1598-1710books.google.com
In 1598 a fleet of five East India ships from the Nether-lands landed on the uninhabited island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, which they claimed as a Dutch ...
A concise history of Dutch Mauritius, 1598-1710semanticscholar.org
Semantic Scholar extracted view of "A concise history of Dutch Mauritius, 1598-1710 : a fruitful and healthy land" by P. Moree.
Discover the History of Mauritiusmauritiusattractions.com
In 1598, Admiral Wybrand Van Warwyck led an expedition to the island, naming it Mauritius after Prince Maurice of Nassau.
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