Dodos were considered to be dumb birds. Were they that dumb?

The first, and most likely, was that, as island animals that had never encountered natural predators before, they were completely unafraid of humans. You don't need to be told how that ended. Gold hypothesizes, "Maybe something about it being flightless led to the thought of it being too dumb to fly.". read more

I would say no. Being a large species of pigeon, evidence suggests that the dodo had a very similar brain-to-body size ratio to them. As someone who has kept a pigeon sometime ago, I can attest that they are not stupid birds. read more

Since they were also flightless, the dodos had pretty much no defense, even if they had been able to work out that humans were bad news. Just eighty-three years after their first sighting in 1598, they were extinct, and they soon became the stuff of legend before 19th century research confirmed they had actually existed. read more

Part of the dodo’s fame comes from its bizarre ecology and morphology—captive dodos were taken back to Europe where they were drawn and studied—yet despite the fascination, much is still unknown about the strange creature. read more