In the reading passage, the writer indicates that human's settlement led to the dodo birds' extinction. On the other hand, the lecturer claims that humans did not victimize the dodo birds, but other new evidence has been discovered recently.
The first point made in the passage is that humans ruthlessly over-hunted the dodo birds. The lecturer, however, refutes this by arguing that people in the past literally did not like the taste of the dodo birds. Dodo had the meaning of disgusting, which people disliked to hear. As a result, they were not willing to eat those birds.
Another point the reading puts an emphasis on is that the dodo birds lost their habitat due to humans' activities to change land for farming. In contrast, this is directly rebutted by the lecturer's claim that forest was not contaminated. It is ironical that human settlement on the island preceded destruction of dodo birds.
Lastly, the passage says that foreign species brought the ecological alteration. This point disagrees with the lecture, which contends that fossilized remnants found in mass grave prove that dodo birds' extinction was not the result of human intervention. It was the natural catastrophes such as cyclones and inundation, which enormously reduced the population of dodo birds and finally led to the extinction. |