This paper presents a new image of a white dodo, supposedly the species associated with Réunion. The image is included in an oil painting by Roelandt Savery (1576--1639), a Flemish artist who portrayed dodos several times but always in shades of brown, this being the only exception. The status of the white dodo of Réunion, a dubious and hypothetical species, is reviewed here according to its scarce portraits and historical references. The author concludes that white dodos could have had a real existence as immature specimens of the brown dodo of Mauritius, but not as a separate species present in Réunion until its extinction. More probably, they were merely the product of artistic licence on the part of Savery, continued by other painters and mistakenly given official status by some zoologists.
...MoreDescription Regarding an oil painting by the 16th-17th century painter Roelandt Savery.
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