Image of dodo bird skeleton and model By BazzaDaRambler - Oxford University Museum of Natural History ... dodo - dead apparently.Uploaded by FunkMonk, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20054563
Using computed tomography (CT) scans of an intact skull, researchers have discovered that extinct dodo birds (Raphus cucullatus), despite having a rather silly name, were actually pretty smart. Well, as smart as a pigeon at least, and pigeons are pretty smart. Dodos likely also had a good sense of smell based on measurements of the olfactory portion of the skull. This sense probably came in handy when hunting for food as these were flightless birds.
Researcher Eugenia Gold of Stony Brook University commented in Live Science that the brain was an appropriate size for their body, neither too large or small. In fact, the ratio of the brain to body size was similar to a modern day pigeon.
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tags: Dodo, Raphus cucullatus, birds, ornithology, Mauritius
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