Extinct

This chap was a gift from my parents from a world cruise some years ago. He is a miniature version of the full-sized Dodo which was about a metre tall. They lived on Mauritius and lost the ability to fly because food was so abundant that they didn't need to bother. They became extinct in the 17th Century, within 80 years of first being discovered by European sailors. This was the first time that people realised that they could induce the extinction of plants or animals.

The Dodo was one of the characters in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. There is a view that it represented the author, whose real name was Charles Dodgson. He had a stammer and would introduce himself as Do-Do-Dodgson.