The Little Dodo of Samoa

The Mauritian dodo is the iconic emblem for both island conservation and extinction, sadly one of the birds lost from the Mascarene archipelago. One might often wonder how this strange bird could have originally been descended from a pigeon, but in Samoa we find the tooth-billed pigeon (Didunculus strigirostris), otherwise known as the little dodo, or locally the Manumea. This strange pigeon is the only member of its genus (a measure of evolutionary uniqueness), and is also the national bird of Samoa.

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