I’ve never seen the appeal of the dodo bird, I guess. And yet somehow, it’s the most popular extinct animal out there. Everyone knows about the dodo bird. When you’re learning about animals as a kid, the teachers are always like, “And here’s a dodo bird. It’s extinct. That means there aren’t any left.”
And every time somebody told me that I was just like, “huh, alright then,” and kept going about my day. Because really, who cares? First of all, they looked pretty dumb. Whoever named them dodo birds, man, that guy nailed it. I don’t blame them for killing them all off after they discovered them. If I had been with the group that first found dodo birds, I’d do the same. I’d be like, “Hey guys, let’s extinct these things already!”
I wonder why dodo birds became so popular. Sometimes I sit around wondering that for an entire afternoon. I can only come to one conclusion, and that’s that there weren’t too many funny things going on back in dodo-times. I’m not quite sure when exactly dodo birds were around, but it was probably a time when there was a lot of war or famine and stuff like that. In a time like that, you’d be chomping at the bit to laugh at any goofy-looking creature, avian or not.
And sure, monkeys are way funnier than dodo birds, so why wouldn’t they laugh at some of those instead. I guess there weren’t too many monkeys around then. There weren’t many dodo birds around then either, unless you lived on their dodo island, but I guess people were drawing and handing out pictures of dodo birds more than they were of monkeys so, hey, you take what you can get.
I’d venture to say the extinction of the dodo was the best thing to happen to modern entertainment. Can you imagine if they were still around? Everything would be dodo this and dodo that. Nobody would have branched out to new things. Instead of Austin Powers, we’d have Austin Dodo Bird or something. Or instead of The Sopranos, we’d have a bunch of b-roll footage of dodo birds dodo’ing around.
Some people say if they could make a currently living animal extinct in exchange for bringing dodo birds back, they’d do it, and they’d pick monkeys to be the animal that goes away. I say those people are crazy! Really? A funny monkey in exchange for a bird? And a dumb bird at that! No way, that’s a terrible deal. Only a bird watcher would make a choice like that, and who cares what they think?
What would you do if you saw a dodo bird in the flesh? Picture this, you’re stumbling around the jungle and you see one and it points its big beak at you. It’d probably startle you, seeing an extinct animal, and you’d go into fight or flight mode. I’d jump right into fight mode and fight it. And then I’d make sure it didn’t have any eggs in a nest somewhere. And if it did, I’d scramble them up and feed them to a monkey.
I guess I’m trying to make two points here. To the average person, listen, it’s okay that dodo birds are gone, get over it. And to scientists, if you’re out there trying to resurrect dodo birds or find some leftover ones, it’s time to call it quits. Focus on something better, like teaching a monkey how to put on a tie so it looks like it’s getting ready for work. Now that’s something I’d like to see.
