Everyone has heard of the dodo, a fifty-pound, flightless dove, famous for its supposed stupidity and for being extinct. Found only on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the dodo was wiped out by 1680, easily slaughtered by sailors and settlers, their pet dogs and cats, and the inevitable rat.

Less widely know is the dodo tree. Only thirteen of these trees still survive, and all of them have stood for more than three hundred years. Even though the trees' fruit ripen and drop, not one seed had sprouted.

Struck by this mystery, one scientist speculated that the trees fruit might have comprised a major part of the dodo's diet. Perhaps the hard seeds germinated only after they had been abraded in the dodo's powerful gizzard. To test this theory, he fed the fruit to the domestic turkeys. After the seeds passed through their digestive system, several sprouted- the first in over three centuries.