The Understatements of the Dodo Bird, discovery of a forgotten species

Angelinna Faisca                                                                                            5/12/21

Anthes, Emily. “The Smart, Agile, and Completely Underrated Dodo Bird.” The Atlantic,             Atlantic Media Company, 8 June 2016, www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/the-dodos-redemption/486086/

The article that I reviewed was “The Smart, Agile, and Completely Dodo Bird.” This article first starts off with the stereotypical ideas and thoughts of the dodo bird: Clumsy, naive, fat, walking straight into the arms of hungry Dutch settlers. However, this story has been told like that over and over, even hearing it in my younger years in school. However, most recently scientists have learned that this wasn’t the case at all. Emily Anthes, the author of this article, then goes into the origin of the dodo bird. About 8 million years ago, the ancestors of the dodo bird, which is part of the Pigeon family, arrived on a small volcanic island and lost its flight and took a big, flightless bird image, one we are familiar with seeing as we speak of the dodo bird. The first record of the dodo bird was in 1599. After this, in less than a hundred years, the dodo bird died out. To make things especially harder, taxidermies were not something that was done efficiently, so many dodo specimens were not saved, bringing the myths even closer to utter false facts. Going far into the future from 1599, in 1865, a fossil deposit was found, and in the 20th century, only one full skeleton was made. In 2011, a paleontologist named Leon Claessens travelled to the island to thoroughly look through the skeleton, along with two of his students. After printing a 3-D model of each bone, they were able to find that the bones of the dodo bird were made to run through  dense forests and rocky hills. After all of this research, they saw that the dodo bird was not a total useless oddity, as they had found that they had also used their small wings for balance. What was also found was that dodo birds had enlarged olfactory bulbs, which might have enhanced their sense of smell, helping them with finding food sources. Overall, this article goes through  the different factors of the myths that were surrounding the dodo bird, when all in all, it was probably one of the most useful and evolved birds in its time. 

In connection to our current life, there were  so many  things that none of us knew about this bird, especially amongst the myths that we have been told. Which leads to the question, what else can  we learn  about extinct animals? The answer is quite a lot, as the dodo bird has been extinct for over 300 years, yet we are still able to even comprehend what its brain size was and even knowing what its sense of smell was. This leads scientists to wonder and explore what other things they can figure out about other extinct animals and how they could have been beneficial to our current Earth.  

Finally, although I don’t think the article really needed anything, since it was a really  good article in my opinion, I think it could have included images, as it didn’t include any throughout the article, which  just made it seem wordy, and less engaging to some degree. However I thought it was a very good article, as it spoke of all the functions that were questioned about. Overall, Emily Anthes article was very  informative and gave me a lot of information about the myths of the dodo and what the dodo bird was really all about.

“COVID-19 Can Affect the Brain. New Clues Hint at How.”

Annabelle Krause

5/4/21

AP Bio

Current Event 21

Sanders, Laura. “COVID-19 Can Affect the Brain. New Clues Hint at How.” Science News, 26 

Apr. 2021, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/covid-brain-coronavirus-symptom-stroke-anxiety-depression. 

In the article, “COVID-19 Can Affect the Brain. New Clues Hint at How,” Sanders discusses what is colloquially known as long COVID, or the long term symptoms and effects of COVID-19.  She begins with the short-term brain-related symptoms “the loss of smell … headaches, confusion, hallucinations and delirium … depression, anxiety and sleep problems.”  This emphasizes that we know that COVID-19 impacts the brain.  However, she further states that “Researchers are still trying to figure out how many people experience these psychiatric or neurological problems, who is most at risk, and how long such symptoms might last.” Very little is known at this point since COVID-19 is so new, and Elyse Singer, a neurologist at UCLA, notes that “It’s going to take us years to tease this apart.”  There are studies going on currently in order to try and understand long COVID and its effect on the brain.  One such study found that “one in three people had experienced a psychiatric or neurological diagnosis” based on the health records of “more than 236,000 COVID-19 survivors.” Although this is definitely noteworthy, the researchers have only proven correlation, not causation.  Most of the diagnoses were for “depression and anxiety, ‘disorders that are extremely common in the general population already,’ points out Jonathan Rogers, a psychiatrist at University College London.”  Beyond that, “About 1 in 50 people with COVID-19 had a stroke” and with those who reported other brain-related symptoms “1 in 11 had strokes.”  Despite early worries, researchers are pretty sure that the virus does not directly affect the brain.  However, it does affect the brain, possibly through blood vessels.  Avindra Nath, a neurologist who studies central nervous system infections at the NIH, found small clots in blood vessels, thick and inflamed walls of vessels, and blood leaking from vessels into brain tissue.  Nath concluded that all of these factors could have contributed to long COVID brain damage.  A last possible reason for long COVID brain damage is inflammation.  Emily Troyer, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Diego, cautioned that “We … know that COVID causes inflammation, and inflammation has the potential to disrupt neurotransmission, particularly in the case of depression.”  Overall, there are many possible justifications for long COVID brain damage, and it is unclear what exactly is the cause, or if long COVID is causing psychological damage.

This is extremely relevant to our lives.  As time progresses, long COVID will become more and more prevalent.  It is important to understand all of the risks of COVID, as well as understand the root of these risks.  As doctors begin to decipher the causes of long COVID, they will be better equipped to treat it and help society move past COVID.  As citizens, it is integral that we continue to be diligent to avoid long COVID and further spreading COVID.  It is more than likely that we will continue to grapple with COVID and its effects for many years, so we must research and understand it.

The article was very clear and was not overly complicated. The author cited many different studies and scientists, which made her article much more convincing and gave her legitimacy. It was also helpful that she explained a rebuttal to each of her assertions at the end of each subsection. This made it clear how little is known about COVID and long COVID. However, I do believe that the author took on too many theories with one article. It would have been easier for me as a reader to fully digest the knowledge she was sharing if she had chosen one idea, such as inflammation causing long COVID, and only focused on it. That would have greatly improved my overall understanding and deepened my understanding of one area, which I believe would be more useful.