Argument About Biology-Dodo

Biology-Dodo

The reading passage raises an issue about whether the dodo’s disappearance was caused by humans. The professor talks about the same question in his lecture. However, his opinions are opposed to the reading. And in the lecture, he uses three viewpoints to support his ideas.

First, the reading passage believes that the Dutch’s hunting toward dodo accelerated the dodo’s disappearance because they had no protection against predators. But the professor argues that although the Dutch settlers could catch dodo for food, they didn’t try to hunt it. This is because the meat of dodo tasted tough and bad, and made the Dutch feel disgusted. So dodo’s disappearance was not caused by humans’ hunting.

Furthermore, differing from the reading’s statement which says that the Dutch’s farming activities changed forest into farmland and cut down trees, which destroyed dodo’s habitats as well as their food supply and caused dodo to die out, the professor claims that the Dutch only altered some areas to farm, large parts of this island was still forest. And a lot of other species of birds still survived there, even if the Dutch existed. Also, dodo makes their nest on the ground instead of trees, so clearing trees would not influence them a lot. Therefore, this was not the reason why dodo disappeared.

Finally, the professor asserts that the amount of dodo has already begun to decline before the Dutch arrived, which means nature might be the real cause of dodo’s disappearance rather than humans. Dodo’s nest had no protection from extreme weather such as strong cyclones and high winds. Their eggs and nests thereby were easily destroyed by them, which led to their death eventually. This point refutes the idea of the reading, which suggests that diseases brought by humans or animals resulted in dodo’s extinction.