Only two complete dodo skulls exist anywhere in the world — one at the Natural History Museum Denmark in Copenhagen, the other at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. An international team led by researchers at the University of Lethbridge in Canada has now scanned and digitally compared both, and the results challenge nearly every popular assumption about the bird.

The study, published August 8, 2026, in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, drew on CT data from three dodo skulls, including the two complete specimens. For comparative anatomy work, the effective sample is small — two intact skulls — and the researchers account for that by comparing the two directly to determine which features were genuinely characteristic of the species rather than artifacts of a single specimen.

How the scans worked

Preparations for a new museum building and permanent galleries, scheduled to open in 2027, gave researchers an unusual opportunity to study the Copenhagen skull in detail using high-resolution CT scanning. The imaging produced a three-dimensional digital model without damaging the specimen, which has sat in the museum's collections for centuries.

Because the brain leaves impressions on the surrounding bone as it develops, the preserved interior structures of the skull carry evidence about how an extinct animal processed information. The team digitally reconstructed the cranial cavity that once held the dodo's brain and compared those endocasts with the brains of living pigeons and doves — the dodo's closest living relatives.

"Studying extinct animals is a bit like detective work. Although the dodo's brain disappeared centuries ago, it left an imprint on the inside of the skull. By digitally reconstructing those spaces and comparing them with the brains of living birds, we can begin to piece together how the dodo sensed, behaved, and interacted with the world around it," says Christy Anna Hipsley, Associate Professor at the Natural History Museum Denmark and co-author of the study.

What the anatomy indicates

Three sensory findings emerged from the comparison.

First, the skull anatomy suggests the dodo may not have been strictly diurnal. Its activity likely extended into dawn and dusk, a more flexible daily schedule than that of its modern relatives.

Second, the olfactory regions point to a stronger sense of smell than modern pigeons and doves possess — a trait that would have shaped how the bird located food on Mauritius.

Third, the dodo's large upper beak appears well suited for collecting tactile information from its environment.

The researchers are explicit about the limits of the method: anatomy alone cannot determine exact behavior. But the findings offer the first evidence-based clues about how the bird foraged and navigated its island habitat before going extinct in the late 17th century.

"The dodo's skull is unlike that of any living bird, which makes it both fascinating and difficult to interpret. By comparing digital reconstructions of the world's only two complete dodo skulls, we now have a much stronger foundation for identifying which features are truly characteristic of the species and what they can tell us about how the dodo lived," Hipsley adds.

What this means for the "dumb dodo" myth

Popular culture has long depicted the dodo as clumsy and unintelligent, sometimes framing its extinction as almost inevitable. The endocast data do not support the idea of reduced cognitive abilities relative to living pigeons and doves. Instead, the evidence points to an animal with a distinctive combination of sensory adaptations that developed over millions of years in isolation on Mauritius.

"The dodo is one of the world's most recognizable extinct animals, yet surprisingly little is known about how it actually lived," says Peter Andrew Hosner, Associate Professor and Curator of Birds at the Natural History Museum Denmark and co-author of the study. "Its behavior and foraging ecology have been debated for centuries. Having access to one of only two complete dodo skulls has given us a unique opportunity to compare the dodo with its closest living relatives and gain new insights into how it experienced and interacted with its environment."

The study does not answer every question. Skull anatomy cannot provide a complete behavioral account, and two specimens constrain what any comparative study can conclude. But by combining CT data from multiple skulls, the team has moved the field beyond centuries of speculation toward evidence-based interpretation.

"The dodo has become a symbol of extinction, but in many ways it remains surprisingly mysterious. Every new piece of evidence helps us move beyond myths and build a more accurate picture of how this extraordinary bird lived before it disappeared," Hosner says.

With the new Natural History Museum Denmark galleries opening in 2027, further imaging work on the Copenhagen skull — and potentially other subfossil material — could refine these reconstructions of the dodo's sensory world in the years ahead.