Did dodos lose the ability to fly, or were they always flightless?

[TimR]

Wiki says they lost the ability to fly in the absence of predators, but in a recent conversation I was told that's a myth, they could never fly.

Anything to it?

[solar penguin]

Yes and no.

AIUI they lost their ability to fly _before_ becoming dodos (or more
precisely, while still in the process of becoming dodos) when they were
still a non-dodo ancestral species.

So the actual fully-evolved dodo species was always unable to fly, but
only because their non-dodo ancestors had already lost the ability to fly
before that.

[John Harshman]

On 2/24/15, 5:26 AM, TimR wrote:
> Wiki says they lost the ability to fly in the absence of predators, but in a recent conversation I was told that's a myth, they could never fly.
>
> Anything to it?
>

No. Dodos are just giant, flightless pigeons. They are firmly embedded
in the clade of flying birds. Their ancestors flew for many millions of
years before settling down on Mauritius.

[jillery]

Which in turn depends on one's definition of "dodo".

--
Intelligence is never insulting.

[TimR]

Well, sure. A dodo is by definition flightless. The more precise question would be how recent the loss of flight had been. If the ancestors had been flightless for a very long time then it doesn't make much sense to claim dodos lost flight due to lack of predators on the Mauritian islands.

Are there lines of bird descent that never had flight at all?

[jillery]

On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 08:56:33 -0800 (PST), TimR <timot...@aol.com>
wrote:

Mauritius is a volcanic island estimated to be about 10 million years
old. Further, the nearest larger body of land is Madagascar, about
500 miles away. It's possible the ancestors rafted there, but I think
it's more likely they flew there, or more precisely were blown there,
and their descendants lost the ability to fly over time.

There are other island birds which have also lost their ability to
fly, ex. New Zealand kakapo, so that's a reasonable hypothesis.

As a side question; is it sufficient to call ancestral dodo's
"dodo-like"?

>Are there lines of bird descent that never had flight at all?

[Sneaky O. Possum]

John Harshman <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote in
news:89WdnYXz8r8ADHHJ...@giganews.com:

And man, were their wings tired.
--
S.O.P.

[John Harshman]

Badump-pah.

[Leopoldo Perdomo]

it makes sense for a bird to loose flight in absence of predators. As the
birds get fatter and bigger, to flight becomes a nuisance and a tiresome
business. It makes sense for these sort of birds to become flightless.
Then, we must look for some mutation that made them bigger and/or fatter.
It would had been combined with some problems to fly. It was not necessary
to fly in the absence of predators. The main difference I see is that
when appropriate predators existed, any bird slow to take off and
fly would soon be the lunch of some hungry animal. The fatter and slow
was the bird the best it tasted. Then, in presence of predators, it is
difficult for a bird to become flightless, except when it was rather
aggressive like the cassowary. But a giant pigeon does not look much
aggressive unless I am mistaken. Specially if the giant bird had not
any reason to be aggressive, for there are not other animals to fight
with.

Eri

[John Harshman]

On 2/24/15, 8:56 AM, TimR wrote:

> Are there lines of bird descent that never had flight at all?

No. A few people used to think that this was the case for ratites. But
it isn't.

[RSNorman]

Avoiding predation is not the only driving factor for maintaining
flight in birds. Locomotion to find food and mate and for migration
and dispersal are certainly other factors. Your argument makes some
sense for those birds who ordinarily feed and nest on the ground and
do not need to travel great distances as seasons change or to find
mates and food sources.

On the Galapagos Islands, the local cormorant is flightless as is, of
course, the penguin, but the noted Darwin finches are not nor are the
other many endemic birds about 20 in number.

[erik simpson]

Is 'ratite' a term that has become deprecated in favor of paleognaths? Or is the
old term still in use, even among ornithogists?

[John Harshman]

Yes, the term is still in use, just as "tree" is still in use by
botanists. It just refers to a flightless paleognath, with no
implication of monophyly. Nobody refers to tinamous as ratites.

[RSNorman]

I did know that trees were flightless but I really thought they
belonged to a different group! (Be a bit more careful with your
pronoun antecepdents.)

Old terms are commonly in use: fish biologists do not study tetrapods
and herpetologists do study tetrapods but only only some: amphibians
and reptiles but not birds and mammals.

[John Harshman]

On 2/24/15, 5:05 PM, RSNorman wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Feb 2015 16:49:17 -0800, John Harshman
> <jhar...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>> On 2/24/15, 1:39 PM, erik simpson wrote:
>>> On Tuesday, February 24, 2015 at 11:45:23 AM UTC-8, John Harshman wrote:
>>>> On 2/24/15, 8:56 AM, TimR wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Are there lines of bird descent that never had flight at all?
>>>>
>>>> No. A few people used to think that this was the case for ratites. But
>>>> it isn't.
>>>
>>> Is 'ratite' a term that has become deprecated in favor of paleognaths? Or is the
>>> old term still in use, even among ornithogists?
>>>
>> Yes, the term is still in use, just as "tree" is still in use by
>> botanists. It just refers to a flightless paleognath, with no
>> implication of monophyly. Nobody refers to tinamous as ratites.
>
> I did know that trees were flightless but I really thought they
> belonged to a different group! (Be a bit more careful with your
> pronoun antecepdents.)

Ha-ha. Spelling flame.

> Old terms are commonly in use: fish biologists do not study tetrapods
> and herpetologists do study tetrapods but only only some: amphibians
> and reptiles but not birds and mammals.

Reptiles, you say? Ooh, another term.

[Dana Tweedy]

On 2/24/15 6:26 AM, TimR wrote:
> Wiki says they lost the ability to fly in the absence of predators, but in a recent conversation I was told that's a myth, they could never fly.
>
> Anything to it?
>

Of course they couldn't fly, they are made of rubber, or silicone, or
some other similar material. Why would one even want one that flies?

What? Oh, you said *Dodos* the extinct bird. That makes sense...

Never mind


DJT

[erik simpson]

I think it may have been Dawkins who remarked that herpetologists study 'herps'.
An interesting abbreviation of a term that has no long form.

[RSNorman]

I don't know when (or if) Dawkins made that remark but I do know that
the herpetologist across the hall from me in 1968 was studying 'herps'
and I doubt that he coined the notion.

[Klaus Hellnick]

Pigeon? I thought Dodos descended from some sort of albatross.

[Bob Casanova]

On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:15:57 -0600, the following appeared
in talk.origins, posted by "Klaus Hellnick"
<khel...@sbcglobal.net>:

>Pigeon? I thought Dodos descended from some sort of albatross.

You may be thinking of Creationist beliefs; they're still
albatrosses around the Creationists' necks...
--

Bob C.

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not
'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"

- Isaac Asimov

[Ernest Major]

On 25/02/2015 18:15, Klaus Hellnick wrote:
> Pigeon? I thought Dodos descended from some sort of albatross.
>

By modern opinion dodos are pigeons. They're phylogenetically nested
among pigeons, and thereby, by the principle of monophyly, are columbids
(aka pigeons).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raphinae

--
alias Ernest Major

[Ernest Major]

There is a long form - herptile. There is also an older form - herpetile
- which still seems to get some use.

--
alias Ernest Major

[erik simpson]

Outstanding. I've always liked herptiles without even knowing their proper name.

[Leopoldo Perdomo]

of course, I was thinking of those that do not needed to fly.
But then, they arrived to an island because they flied? They would
not arrive on foot. The case of Australia or Madagascar is different
for those lands were once close to other continents. They could have
had flightless birds since the times they were close to other continents.
Then, the flightless birds were a much older adaptation, or evolution.
But the birds that are found in volcanic islands only some 5 or 10
million years old... is a different question. They arrived to a
volcanic island by flying... or driven by a hurricane if they
were not very good fliers.
Eri

[RonO]

I've heard that Dodos didn't taste very good. A lot of people eat
pigeons. Did their diet make their meat have a fowl taste or was that
just some cockamamie flight of fancy?

[RSNorman]

Don't get your feathers in a ruffle over this. The pecking order of
tastiness depends largely on just how hungry you are or how expensive
the restaurant that serves squab may be. I'll bet now you are going
to tell us that stool pigeon tastes like stool.

[RonO]

No. Just that jail birds taste about as good as stool pigeons, but it
is illegal to eat them.

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <f6apead2eefkb1h34...@4ax.com>,

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

"The 2002 study indicated that the ancestors of the dodo and the solitaire
diverged around the Paleogene-Neogene boundary. The Mascarene Islands
(Mauritius, Réunion, and Rodrigues), are of volcanic origin and are less
than 10 million years old. Therefore, the ancestors of both birds probably
remained capable of flight for a considerable time after the separation of
their lineage."

So, dodos and solitares each independently lost their ability to fly.

BTW, my .sig seems especially appropriate to this thread.

--
Please reply to: | "Evolution is a theory that accounts
pciszek at panix dot com | for variety, not superiority."
Autoreply has been disabled | -- Joan Pontius

[jillery]

I agree that your last sentence is the best inference based on the
evidence.

I alluded to a separate issue, on the plastic nature of definitions.
In this case, is "flightless" a defining characteristic of "dodo", or
is it merely a secondary feature? If the latter, then the ancestors
of dodos which flew to Mauritius might also be called dodos.

>BTW, my .sig seems especially appropriate to this thread.
>
>--
>Please reply to: | "Evolution is a theory that accounts
>pciszek at panix dot com | for variety, not superiority."
>Autoreply has been disabled | -- Joan Pontius

Assuming you refer to the right-hand side, I don't recall any
reference in this thread to superiority. Will you elaborate?

[Paul Ciszek]

In article <j58efa1nt1rcpo345...@4ax.com>,

Dodos are not generally associated with "superiority", given that their
name has become a synonym for "stupid". My understanding is that along
with flight, they also lost many of the survival instincts that most
birds have, and tended to just leave their eggs lying around rather
than build nests.

In short, they are a good reminder that "evolution" does not have to mean
becoming stronger, faster, smarter, or "better" as humans would measure
it.

[Sneaky O. Possum]

nos...@nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote in news:md82o2$svp$1
@reader1.panix.com:

>
> In article <j58efa1nt1rcpo345...@4ax.com>,
> jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>On Tue, 3 Mar 2015 22:53:26 +0000 (UTC), nos...@nospam.com (Paul
>>Ciszek) wrote:
>>
>>>BTW, my .sig seems especially appropriate to this thread.
>>>
>>>--
>>>Please reply to: | "Evolution is a theory that accounts
>>>pciszek at panix dot com | for variety, not superiority."
>>>Autoreply has been disabled | -- Joan Pontius
>>
>>
>>Assuming you refer to the right-hand side, I don't recall any
>>reference in this thread to superiority. Will you elaborate?
>
> Dodos are not generally associated with "superiority", given that their
> name has become a synonym for "stupid". My understanding is that along
> with flight, they also lost many of the survival instincts that most
> birds have, and tended to just leave their eggs lying around rather
> than build nests.

Your understanding is incorrect. Dodos were not driven to extinction
because they were stupid or lacked survival instincts. They were driven
to extinction because of an unfortunate encounter with a predator that
was intelligent enough to devise the means to slaughter every last one of
them and thoughtless enough to do it. This predator was also cruel enough
to mock them and blame them for falling victim to it, but that's
incidental.

> In short, they are a good reminder that "evolution" does not have to
> mean becoming stronger, faster, smarter, or "better" as humans would
> measure it.

That, sir, is an insult to a blameless and much-missed bird. If you want
a good reminder of evolution's deficiencies, look to their murderers
instead: those apes who excel all other animals in intelligence and yet
use that intelligence to do such colossally stupid things.
--
S.O.P.

[Burkhard]

I thought these days the finger of suspicion points mainly to the pigs
the apes brought with them?

>

[Sneaky O. Possum]

Burkhard <b.sc...@ed.ac.uk> wrote in news:md88ec$k1v$1...@dont-email.me:

That's included under 'the means to slaughter every last one of them.'
Introducing innocently destructive species to fragile ecosystems is but
one of the colossally stupid things we apes like to do: it's almost as
popular as blaming those colossally stupid things on anybody we can find
who can't speak in their own defense.
--
S.O.P.

[Burkhard]

Oink to that!

[jillery]

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 22:59:14 +0000 (UTC), nos...@nospam.com (Paul

Ciszek) wrote:

>
>In article <j58efa1nt1rcpo345...@4ax.com>,
>jillery <69jp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>On Tue, 3 Mar 2015 22:53:26 +0000 (UTC), nos...@nospam.com (Paul
>>Ciszek) wrote:
>>
>>>BTW, my .sig seems especially appropriate to this thread.
>>>
>>>--
>>>Please reply to: | "Evolution is a theory that accounts
>>>pciszek at panix dot com | for variety, not superiority."
>>>Autoreply has been disabled | -- Joan Pontius
>>
>>
>>Assuming you refer to the right-hand side, I don't recall any
>>reference in this thread to superiority. Will you elaborate?
>
>Dodos are not generally associated with "superiority", given that their
>name has become a synonym for "stupid". My understanding is that along
>with flight, they also lost many of the survival instincts that most
>birds have, and tended to just leave their eggs lying around rather
>than build nests.
>
>In short, they are a good reminder that "evolution" does not have to mean
>becoming stronger, faster, smarter, or "better" as humans would measure
>it.

Ok, got it, evolution usually produces "good enough". Good point.

[Walter Bushell]

[Walter Bushell]

On 2015-03-03 00:11:37 +0000, RonO <roki...@cox.net> said:

> No. Just that jail birds taste about as good as stool pigeons, but it
> is illegal to eat them.

Yes, but when sent to prision many men and boys are forced to eat jail birds.

[pdblack...@hotmail.co.uk]

> Did dodos


Did nobody else find that funny?

Did doo doos?
Did doo does?

Ahh, never mind.