Meet the Dodo Bird

At last My very first doll was completed today and was promptly brought to the park for a photo shoot. I am really pleased with how he turned out. Working with this project was an absolute joy and I just cant part with him.
This will most definitely not be the last doll I make.
I am inspired daily by the amazing sculpting skills and imagination of artists here on dA and my Favourite Folder continues to grow with their work.
A special Thank You to to ZombieHun It was her awesome tutorial that first sparked me to try out doll making for myself. Check out her tutorial here: [link]

Now... A note on dodos.
The Dodo bird was a flightless bird indigenous to the island of Mauritius. The first reported sighting of the bird was 1598.
The introduction of the species Homo sapiens proved catastrophic for the fauna of Mauritius, most famously the Dodo bird, and the last accepted sighting was 1662.
(source: Wikipedia [link]

Humans... *sigh*

I watched a BBC documentary some years ago titled " A Dodos Guide to Avoiding Extinction" and right before joining dA I watched it again.

As you can imagine that documentary made an impression and was directly responsible for my choice of user name.

In the documentary they approached the topic of reversing extinction through cloning.
The geneticist they interviewed made it very clear that bringing back the dodo would be a really bad idea.

Her reasons were the following:
1) scientific and technological knowledge is not advanced enough to successfully bring back an extinct animal.
2) there is insufficient genetic material from the dodo remains to provide a complete DNA sequence.
3) it´s natural habitat is destroyed.
4) cloning would not bring back the species only a lonesome individual that would just die alone anyway
5) it would be very expensive
and
6) it makes much more sense to concentrate our efforts and resources on saving existing species from facing the same fate as the doomed dodo.

In short, she made such a good argument for NOT bringing back the dodo that all I was left with was; "But, but.. Dodos are awesome and it would be so cool!"

Well, I guess there is just no arguing with clever, highly educated people who know what they are talking about!

I have a soft spot for the Dodo. This poor, ridiculous, doomed, awesome bird, and if I cant rely on science to bring them back, I will just have to do it myself! With resin, faux fur and fluffy stuffing, dammit!