None of us will ever see this bird though, because, sadly, the last one was clubbed to death by Dutch colonists in about 1680. The giant tortoises were eaten to extinction because the early sailors regarded them much as we regard canned food. They just picked them off the beach and put them on their ships as ballast, and then, if they felt hungry, they’d go down to the hold, pull one up, kill it, and eat it. But the large, gentle dove—the dodo—was just clubbed to death for the sport of it. And that is what Mauritius is most famous for: the extinction of the dodo.
