UNIT 2: PRACTICE
As dead as a dodo
Have you ever seen a quagga or a great auk in a zoo? No? Don’t be surprised!
They are actually extinct animals. Right! But here’s the surprise: did you know that 99 %
of all the animals that have lived on earth are extinct? That’s a lot of extinct animals.
Long ago most animals became extinct naturally, because of changes in the
weather or because their usual food or habitat disappeared. In recent times, however,
most animals have become extinct because of humans. Sometimes people have
destroyed a species for its meat, its fur or its feathers. Sometimes, farmers have
destroyed a species to protect farm animals or farmland. Sometimes hunters have
destroyed a species just for sport.
The dodo, which lived in the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, built its nests on
the ground and couldn’t fly. European sailors first arrived on the island in 1507. They
killed dodos for their meat. They also brought dogs, cats and rats to Mauritius. These
animals destroyed the dodos’ nests, eggs and chicks. Soon there weren’t many dodos
left. Some dodos were sent to animal collectors in Europe. The collectors didn’t breed
these birds, however. They just put them on show in cages. The dodo became extinct
more than 300 years ago, in 1681.
The quagga lived in S. Africa. It was a kind of zebra. The front half of its body was
striped brown and white. The back half of its body was plain brown. Like other zebras,
quaggas lived in grasslands. In the 19th c. hunters killed many quaggas for their meat
and for their skins. During the same period, farmers took large parts of the quaggas’
grassland habitat and turned them into farmland. Some people tried to domesticate
the quagga, but with little success. The last wild quagga was killed by hunters in 1878.
The last quagga in the world died in Amsterdam zoo in 1883. The passenger pigeon
lived in North America.
A hundred and fifty years ago there were thousands of millions of passenger pigeons.
American indians killed them for food, but they didn’t hunt young birds or they didn’t kill
more than they needed. They treated the passenger pigeon like the buffalo, with
respect. White Americans hunted the birds for sport. They sometimes killed hundreds of
thousands in a day. The feathers were used to make pillows and the meat was cheaper
than chicken. Soon there weren’t many passenger pigeons left. In 1900 a boy shot the
last wild bird. In 1914 the last passenger pigeon bird died in Cincinnati Zoo.
Animals like the dodo, the quagga and the passenger pigeon have disappeared
forever. Today other animals are in danger of following them. The Spanish lynx and the
black-headed uakari are endangered species because people have destroyed large
areas of their natural habitat. Slow-moving Caribbean manatees are endangered
because humans have turned the sea in which they live into a leisure area. Speed
boats have already killed many of them, and fishing lines have seriously injured others.
Shouldn’t we stop these animals from becoming extinct too before it’s too late?
[from Bowler, Bill and Sue Parminter (1999) Network. Student’s Book 2. Oxford: OUP, pp.
80-81]