Overview
- The peer-reviewed study published on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, used high-resolution CT scans to build digital endocasts from the world’s three well-preserved dodo skulls and compare them with living pigeons.
- Scientists found the dodo’s forebrain — the region linked to cognition and memory — was proportionate to living pigeons, providing no anatomical evidence that the species was less intelligent.
- The scans revealed distinctive sensory traits: relatively small optic lobes alongside slightly larger eyes, plus enlarged olfactory bulbs and trigeminal nerve regions, which together suggest low-light activity and reliance on smell and touch when foraging.
- The authors link historical reports of trusting, predator-naive behaviour to rapid human-driven extinction, arguing that approachability and ground nesting made dodos easy to hunt rather than implying low intelligence.
- The research team released the scan data and worked with major museums holding the specimens to enable further study, while cautioning that endocasts infer brain shape not soft tissue or exact behaviour.