30 GOOD-BYE
ckside. Being flig nested onts eggs and cragically easy prey for pigs, dogs, and monkeysbrougo tsiders. It inct by 1683 and certainlygone by 1693. Beyond t not of course t see itslike again. e knos reproductive s and diet, made in tranquility or alarm. e don’t possess a single dodo egg.
From beginning to end our acquaintance e dodos lasted just seventy years. tis a breaty period—t must be said t by t in our ory er of irreversible eliminations.
Nobody knoe ructive it is a fact t over t fiftytended to vanisenastonishingly large numbers.
In America, ty genera of large animals—some very large indeed—disappearedpractically at a stroke after tinent beten andty toget aboutters of ter arrived -ional capabilities. Europe and Asia, ures.
Australia, for exactly te reasons, lost no less t.
Because ter populations ively small and tionstruly monumental—as many as ten million mammot to lie frozen in tundra of norties t be otions,possibly involving climate cural ory put it: “terial benefit to ingdangerous animals more often to—teaksyou can eat.” Ot may criminally easy to catcralia and tim Flannery, “t knowenougo run away.”
Some of tures t acular and ake a littlemanaging if till around. Imagine ground slot could look into an upstairsortoises nearly t, monitor lizards ty feet long baskingbeside desert ern Australia. Alas, t. today, across types of really y (a metric tonor more) land animals survive: eleps, r for tens of millionsof years iv