Chapter 254: The Dodo's Contribution

"Where there is a dodo, there is not a single bird feather here!" Li Fei threw his hat angrily.

"Theoretically, it should be in this wood, and it is not the size of a hummingbird, this small desert island has confirmed since it was discovered by the Empire that there are no people, and it is impossible for people to hunt dodos, maybe on the other side of the island? Looking for it in the afternoon? The sparse bushes in this coastal area will not have many fruits for the dodos to eat, so it's normal to not see them! Li Ji comforted.

"The forest in the middle of the island is very dense, there are many fruit trees, I believe that the dodos live in the dense forest, and they will not come to this seaside saline land, how can you eat the legendary delicacy without paying the price." Zhao Shouzhong licked his lips as he spoke.

"Which of you saw the foodie Sun Chang? I searched for a long time but didn't see his shadow. Should you rush to the center of the island alone to find the dodo? Bai Jia asked.

"It's very likely that his foodie persistence will make him and his tall son go deep to collect ingredients, but we don't have to worry, we should be able to see these two food hunters returning with a full load of food fighting for food in the afternoon. Their family's heirloom kitchen kit is no joke, not to mention that this island is free of large animals and dangerous poisons, and even if there is, there is only one way to die in the hands of their family. Liu Jiao shuddered when he remembered the fat and strong son like Lu Zhishen, who was half a head taller than Sun Chang's 1.8-meter-8 big man, catching a dodo in the forest.

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It is said that Sun Chang's father and son and their bodyguards entered the depths of this island full of dense forests in full armor, and when they were looking for the legendary dodo, they went all the way surprisingly. Bird droppings were found in less than five minutes after entering the dense forest. Searching all the way through the trails, you will find a very special dodo. After Sun Chang compared the images in his memories of old time and space with the dodo in front of him, he felt that the painter and stuntman who painted the dodo were weak. A large, finely feathered bird stands under a large tree pecking at the fruit, and the atmosphere is as peaceful as a hen in her yard pecking at the leaves. The dodo is not afraid of people at all. After hearing the movement, he raised his head and looked at everyone, and lowered his head again, pecking at the fruit on the ground.

Sun Chang couldn't help but sigh at the island's environment without predators, the dodo was degraded and unable to fly in this environment without natural predators, and even the basic jingjue and large biological stress response were lost. Unable to run fast and without any physical weapons to fight the enemy, even the sharp beak has been transformed into a swollen and curved shape like a toucan, and its body is full of obese animal characteristics that have been pampered for a long time, lack of exercise, and overgrowth. The feathers are almost all degraded into downfeathers, and the few remaining positive feathers on the wings that are too short to support flight are only symbolic beings, indicating that it once had the genes to fly in the sky. The father and son of the Sun family couldn't help but start staring at these big birds with fat brains. What fun is there to catch such a dumbfounded prey, they have no interest in grabbing a few bodyguards who were waiting for a few minutes ago to disperse and gather, and one of them carried several adult dodos weighing more than 30 pounds and walked back.

A few hours passed. Living up to expectations, the Sun family's father and son and bodyguards finally walked out of the depths of the dense forest with dozens of dodos on their backs. These have been moistened by the long tropical rainy season, and the dodo is fat, oily and slippery. According to the method of chicken feast, fry and cook all kinds of methods, and in less than half an hour, the dodo feast of all the people is ready. The chef who tasted the taste of boiled 'chicken soup' for the first time, Sun Chang, was simply disappointed, and Sun Chang made a gesture of please. The people who didn't know why started to know the reason.

The flesh of this dodo is thick and stuffed. The taste is astringent and bitter, the fat is extremely greasy, a layer of fat floating on the soup is a finger thick, that is, some local mountain game meat is almost the same, after the cooking of Sun Chang father and son and several shipboard chefs who are comparable to the imperial kitchen or even the level of the chef who cultivates the imperial kitchen, it can reach the level of being able to eat, if the ordinary cooking method does not know how unpalatable it is! It is no wonder that the colonists of the old time and space did not domesticate and breed this pigeon-shaped bird that seems to be a meat bird.

These birds that lay their eggs in their nests on the ground were simply extinct because of large alien species, and they had nothing to do with their taste. According to the discussion and speculation of many people, this large bird with no natural enemies must have been the tragedy of being exterminated by the new large animals. Wild animals that escaped from colonizer ships and corrals destroyed the species, and pigs, dogs, and rats were able to clean the ground of these eggs. The fact that only one egg can be laid at a time has also deprived the bird of its economic value in domestication. Disappointed again, the crowd harvested a few specimens and leather that could barely be used as a purse, and left the desert island that had lost its appeal.

According to the evolutionary point of view, this species that evolved in a greenhouse environment is simply not able to survive in a fiercely competitive external environment, and it has lost any ability of a species to occupy a place in an environment where the law of the jungle is the main theme, and has poor combat effectiveness (vegetarian and self-defense), poor reproductive ability (only one egg), and poor ability to evade predators (unable to fly and build nests on the ground). The core ability of these three biological species to reproduce is so poor that it can only perish after new species come in.

This species is simply the animalistic incarnation of the ancient Chinese carnivores, and it perfectly coincides with the brains that grow up in greenhouses with unresponsive and fat brains, and the dodo is as uncompetitive as those organizations that rely on administrative monopolies to create a non-competitive environment. Hurting the like is the last attitude of the traversal crowd towards this species that is bound to perish.

Obviously, it is impossible for this closed ecological environment to cultivate any valuable species, just as it is impossible for a closed society to cultivate heroes. Almost all species of value to human beings are the product of thousands of years of cultivation, and these animals and plants with edible, medicinal, and industrial raw material uses are the ancestral heritage that is difficult to obtain from nature by screening or domestication. Those species that are difficult to reproduce, difficult to domesticate, inferior in value, and too difficult to serve have been eliminated by the ancestors, and in this regard, according to future experience, it is better to follow the old method of respecting the heavens and ancestors. If the traversal had mastered all the details of genetic technology instead of a few half-baked transgenic technologies, it would have been possible to create several high-value, multi-purpose, and reliable stable species in a very short period of time, but unfortunately this is just a pipe dream. The premise of this utopian dream is to grasp and resolve the genetic code of all species, which is obviously just a fantasy before entering the era of the interstellar age.

Whether or not to protect this species was discussed, and the conclusion was obvious, and the people who believed in the supremacy of profit by doing nothing had no interest in this worthless species at all. In just a few decades, this rare species will disappear from the face of the earth, and its only role may be to exist in the museums and zoos of the Empire, like living fossils such as giant pandas, as teaching materials for environmental determinism on the laws of nature and evolutionary theory.

After feeling the power of the natural world, the traversers couldn't help but think of their own future and destiny, whether the two different space-time environments determined their fate or their own abilities? The fierce competition in modern society has endowed the traversal with powerful abilities, and when it comes to the slow-paced ancient society, this very ordinary ability of the old time and space has become an artifact-like golden finger. Just as a predator in the rainforest can quickly kill all the dodos on this island, the traversal successfully destroys one after another seemingly powerful opponents in the plane, and truly becomes the top predator of the social pyramid.

Once again, environmental determinism seems to have gained the upper hand in the psychology of the traversal.

After leaving this uninhabited desert island, the heavy thoughts and feelings of the traversers made the whole ship shrouded in an oppressive atmosphere for several days. In the end, it was Li Ji who picked out the misunderstanding of thinking, people are not animals, as long as they have the subjective initiative of thinking and the sense of crisis created by themselves, they will never lose their competitiveness in a peaceful and comfortable environment, birds will lose various abilities in the evolution of generations, but human beings will not lose their skills in the evolution of generations, the diversity and internal struggle of various civilizations is the perfect source of a sense of crisis, and whether the peaceful environment will make people lose their enterprising spirit is completely unfounded. The famous saying of the ancestors that "although the country is great and warlike, it will perish" is followed by "although the world is peaceful and forgetful, the war will be dangerous", and there are ancestral points, as long as the cultural inheritance is maintained, I believe that the Chinese civilization will never be able to hit the street like a dodo.

For the sake of the dodo's inspiration for the thinking of the traversal, Li Ji decided not to let this inevitable extinct species disappear, and sent people to this island next year to bring thousands of them to various tropical colonies and overseas territorial zoos and breeding centers with the same climate. Although this kind of dodo does not have the same medicinal value as the giant panda and golden snub-nosed monkey, or the tiger, it is also an educational value to keep some descendants as a negative example.

Two days later, in order to relieve the pressure of navigation, the people who arrived at Xinsha Port (the capital of Xiaoxuanzhou, the largest port in Madagascar in the old time and space, in the southwest of the island) stayed in this port that was barely about the same as the mainland coastal fishing village for half a month, and only after entering the southern hemisphere did they re-board and leave the port to continue their journey around the world. )