if you wanna sing out...

I just finished a great non-fiction book called Song of the Dodo by David Quammen. The book is extremely well-written, tackling a topic that can be at times complex: extinction. The dodo is not the only subject of the book, though provides an interesting glance at how a species adapts to a benevolent environment. It wasn't until humans settled on the island that life for the dodo became problematic. You see, the dodo had adapted so that it built nests on the ground, so it was fairly easy for humans to scoop up dodo eggs and even easier for them to kill the dodo, an animal that just strutted its stuff right out in the open (they never had to worry about predators before). It's a long book (about 600 pages), but a great read.