(pls do not take this very seriously. I am not out here tryin to bring back extinct animals so that we can farm them. This is just a good non-boring way to talk about agricultural logistics & also conservation logistics. And boy do we need that sometimes)
Comments
This should be a slam dunk! We farm doves & pigeons for meat. Some dodos were kept in captivity before they went extinct, & seemed to be pretty omnivorous.
Conclusion: Farm the dodo.
But wait
Some of that may have been down to poor cooking (they got tough & stringy if overcooked).
Partly due to that, it seems dodos may not have been hunted into extinction by humans. It was probably the feral hogs that got them.
And demand for white breast meat is what drives most of the global chicken trade. So dodo, no matter how farmable it is, wouldn't replace chicken.
That's pretty standard for flightless island birds! If you're on an island with no predators, there's no point in having lots of little babies so you can play the "don't get eaten by predators" odds.
They tend to raise one HUGE chick at a time.
That's also part of why dodos went extinct so quickly. They just don't reproduce very fast.
But they caught on quick, ran real fast, & packed a solid bite. Their beak was hooked & strong enough to crack open nuts & crabs.
So, not quite the slow stupid critter of legend.
(*this fall is soon enough)