Rodrigues Solitaire - Relationship With Humans

Relationship With Humans

Sir Thomas Herbert was the first to mention that "Dodos" lived on Rodrigues in 1634 (most likely referring to the Solitaire), and "Dodos" were again mentioned in 1700.

The next account (the first referring to the bird as the "Solitaire") was published in François Leguat's 1708 memoir, A New Voyage to the East Indies. Leguat was the leader of a group of nine French Huguenot refugees, who were the first to colonise the island (from 1691 to 1693) after they were abandoned there by their captain. He described the bird in some detail, including its behaviour. The Huguenots praised the birds for their flavour (especially the young), and used their gizzard stones as knife sharpeners (D'Héguerty claimed these were also useful in medicine). Leguat's observations are considered some of the first cohesive accounts of animal behaviour in the wild. He later left for Mauritius, but was too late to observe Dodos there.

Many old accounts mention that Solitaires were hunted by man. Writing in 1735, Gennes de la Chancelière described the capture and consumption of two specimens as follows:

Our men told of having seen goats and a large quantity of birds of different kinds: they brought, amongst others, two of which were bigger by a third than the largest turkey; they appeared, nevertheless to be still quite young, still having down on the neck and head; their wingtips were but sparsely feathered, without any proper tail. Three sailors told me of having seen two others, of the same species, as big as the biggest ostrich. The young ones that were brought had the head made more or less like the latter animal, but their feet were similar to those of turkeys, instead of that of the ostrich which is forked and cloven in the shape of a hind's foot. These two birds, when skinned, had an inch of fat on the body. One was made into a pie, which turned out to be so tough that it was uneatable.

Japetus Steenstrup noted that some Solitaire remains bore traces of having been broken by man (or perhaps another large predator) to extract bone marrow.

Unlike the Dodo, no Rodrigues Solitaires are known to have been sent to Europe alive. However, it has been claimed that Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais sent a "Solitaire" to France from the nearby island of Réunion around 1740. Since the Réunion Solitaire is believed to have gone extinct by this date, the bird may actually have been a Rodrigues Solitaire.