There is a persistent myth that dodos were eaten as food for the long voyages between the Cape of Good Hope and Asia, but neither historical nor archeological findings corroborate this. (The island was first visited by the Portuguese in 1505, but the Dutch were the first permanent settlers on the island.) The name dodo comes from the archaic Portuguese word doudo, meaning "simpleton", doido in modern Portuguese meaning fool or mad. The Dodo was entirely fearless of people, and this, in combination with its flightlessness, made it easy prey. Thus, in captivity with its ready availability of food, the birds would become overfed very easily. As Mauritius has marked dry and wet seasons, the dodo probably fattened itself on ripe fruits at the end of the wet season to live through the dry season where food was scarce contemporary reports speak of the birds "greedy" appetite. The traditional image of the dodo is of a fat, clumsy bird, but this view has been challenged by Andrew Kitchener, a biologist at the Royal Museum of Scotland (reported in National Geographic News, February 2002), who believes that the old drawings showed overfed captive specimens. The breast structure was insufficient to have ever supported flight and it is believed these ground-bound birds evolved to take advantage of an island ecology with no predators. Dodos were very large birds, weighing about 23 kg (50 pounds). Nevertheless, from artists' renditions we know that the dodo had blue-grey plumage, a 23-centimetre (9-inch) blackish hooked bill with reddish point, very small useless wings, stout yellow legs, and a tuft of curly feathers high on its rear end. The decaying remnants of the last stuffed Dodo, in Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, were burned in 1755.
There are no intact museum specimens of the Dodo extant today.
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