Ten birds have changed the world. Stephen Moss's new book is also a producer, but the author

of a book that reveals to me again and again, language is important, and the word extinction

is frightening. How many extinctions there have been since the creation of the Earth in

the bombardment of three and a half to four four B years ago? But this one, the Dodo bird

turns out to be the author of the word extinction that enters into the vocabulary of the century

since he was first discovered. I believe it was the 16th century when a ship called

air. And the Dodo no longer exists, but the word extinction is now important for those

who move to save or protect or in some way worry about the habitats and the destruction

of our birds. The humble Dodo, I learned from you that when the Dutch first found him,

they call him the Wallow birds, and they regarded him as loathsome. What happened to him?

Why did they go away and the Mauritius Islands suddenly, Stephen?

Well, what I hadn't realized about the Dodo was the unlike other oceanic islands that were

colonized by humans during the sort of age of empire, if you like, in the 16th, 17th, 18th

centuries, Mauritius was not inhabited by people. So unlike America, unlike New Zealand,

unlike Australia, where there were humans were there ready, Mauritius was a place where the Dodo

lived and it had evolved not to have to fly, because why would it have to fly? There's no

enemies and there are also no predators, no ground predators, no mammals. And unfortunately,

the Dutch sailors who arrived in 1597 or 98 brought in dogs and cats and rats and actually

macaque monkeys, which they kept as pets. And those birds both ate the eggs and the chicks of

the Dodo in the nest, but also, of course, could catch the flightless adults. I'm like your turkey,

it couldn't fly away. And the Dodo was extinct within about 80 years. You can never of course tell

when the very last individual dies out. But the last reliable sighting is towards the end of the

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