Despite their remains being on display in museums around the world, there are only two complete dodo skulls known to exist: one at the Natural History Museum Denmark<\/a> and one at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n These specimens have been housed in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Oxford, Great Britain, for centuries and have just contributed to a groundbreaking study led by researchers from the University of Lethbridge in Canada. These researchers set out with the aim to investigate how the dodo experienced the world around itself.<\/p>\n Despite their prominence in pop culture, little is actually known about the dodo\u2019s behaviour \u2013 save for the tales that have been passed on (and likely embellished) from generation to generation. By X-ray CT scanning the skulls of these birds, the researchers were able to gain new insights into its sensory abilities and, from those, infer behaviours.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dodo is one of the world\u2019s most recognisable extinct animals, yet surprisingly little is known about how it actually lived,\u201d said Peter Andrew Hosner, Associate Professor and Curator of Birds at the Natural History Museum Denmark and co-author of the study. \u201cIts behaviour and foraging ecology have been debated for centuries. Having\u2026skulls has given us a unique opportunity to compare the dodo with its closest living relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers scanned three dodo skulls as part of their study, including the world\u2019s only two known complete specimens and a less complete but still well-preserved specimen from London\u2019s Natural History Museum. From the X-ray CT scans of these specimens, researchers were able to reconstruct endocasts \u2013 3D models of the interior space of the dodo\u2019s braincase.<\/p>\n These endocasts showed researchers the size, shape and surface features of a dodo\u2019s brain and allowed them to compare the specimens directly, providing them a stronger basis for interpreting the dodo\u2019s anatomy. The researchers also X-ray CT scanned skulls of an extinct bird known as the Rodrigues solitaire \u2013 a close relative of the dodo that was discovered and hunted to extinction at a similar time.<\/p>\n \u201cStudying extinct animals is a bit like detective work. Although the dodo\u2019s brain disappeared centuries ago, it left an imprint on the inside of the skull. By digitally reconstructing those spaces and comparing them with the brains of living birds, we can begin to piece together how the dodo sensed\u2026 and behaved,\u201d said Christy Anna Hipsley, Associate Professor at the Natural History Museum Denmark and another co-author of the study.<\/p>\n The researchers compared the digital reconstructions of the dodo\u2019s brain with those of pigeons and doves<\/a>, its closest living relatives.\u00a0<\/p>\n These comparisons revealed the dodo may not have been exclusively active during daylight hours and may have also foraged during dawn and dusk. It may have also had a more powerful sense of smell than its living relatives and used its large upper beak to \u2018feel out\u2019 its surroundings.\u00a0<\/p>\n This suggests dodos may have been pretty smart, perhaps smarter even than pigeons<\/a>, which have been shown to remember human faces and recognise all 26 letters of the English alphabet. They\u2019ve even been taught to spot cancerous cells from mammograms with high accuracy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dodo\u2019s skull is unlike that of any living bird, which makes it both fascinating and difficult to interpret. By comparing digital reconstructions of the world\u2019s only two complete dodo skulls, we now have a much stronger foundation for identifying which features are truly characteristic of the species and what they can tell us about how the dodo lived,\u201d Hipsley adds.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s one thing this study shows, it\u2019s that while the bird may be long gone, research into it is far from \u2018as dead as a dodo\u2019…<\/p>\n Find out more about the latest study<\/a>, published in the\u00a0Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society<\/a>.<\/p>\n Top image: Dodo skull preserved in the collection of Natural History Museum Denmark. Credit: Natural History Museum Denmark<\/p>\n More amazing stories about birds<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The dodo may have disappeared more than 350 years ago, in the late 17th century, but its legacy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-729715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=729715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/729716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/A-model-of-the-extinct-dodo-next-to-a-cast-of-the-skull-scaled.jpeg\")
A model of the extinct dodo next to a cast of the skull exhibited at Natural History Museum Denmark. Credit Natural History Museum Denmark<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/A-cross-section-scan-of-a-dodo-skull.jpeg\")
A cross-section scan of a dodo skull Credit: Natural History Museum Denmark<\/p>\n