Dodo Brains Were Surprisingly Big

Plants and Animals





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A model of a dodo that will be on display at the American Museum of Natural History. AMNH/C. Chesek

The famously extinct dodo, Raphus cucullatus, disappeared about a century after humans showed up on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, and the word "dodo" became synonymous with a person that’s old-fashion, obsolete, and stupid. But now, researchers have created the world’s first internal cast of a dodo skull, and as it turns out, they may have been fairly intelligent after all.