▶ Your Answer :
The reading
passage provides several evidences that the dodo went extinct due to human
activities. However, the professor in the lecture refutes the author’s claim
and points out that the human activities were not a crucial reason for its
extinction.
First of all,
the professor argues that dodo was inappropriate as an edible meat. According
to the record, it tasted awful and repulsive. Even the origin of the name
itself means “disgusting bird”. Hence, there was very low chance that the bird
was consumed as a food by human. This contradicts the author’s points that dodo
was an easy prey which mainly had been used as a food source of the settlers.
Second,
according to the lecture, there was time gap between the settlement of human
and extinction of dodo. In addition, no evidence was found that human destroyed
their inhabitant. Therefore, it is hard to draw a direct relationship between
human activities and extinction of dodo. The area that people lived at the time
was already lacked attractiveness from the birds. This casts doubts about the
author’s assertion that the transformation of the land by people caused the
existence of the species.
Lastly, the lecturer
insists that the causation of the extermination might be other reasons, such as
natural disasters. Regarding to fossil data, the time when the settlers arrived
at the island, the population of dodo had been already shrunk. He assumed that
the natural disasters had swept the population before human encounter. This
rebuts the reading passage’s argument that the foreign animal which human
brought disrupted the ecosystem and finally led to extinction of the birds.
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