When a Dodo Flaps it's Wings...

When a Dodo Flaps its Wings...

They say that if a butterfly in Japan flaps its wings it could cause a hurricane in, let's say, Galverston, Texas. That is a whole lot of pressure, blame and guilt to put onto one small butterfly but of course, although many people do, it is not meant to be taken literally. It's just a way of saying that seemingly unimportant incidents can start a sequence of events with far reaching and unexpected results. For example: about eighteen months ago in Bosnia a young pregnant woman, desperately in need of a toilet, was forced to stop at a remote café where we happened to be drinking coffee.. as a result I have recently been providing cartoons for a project linked to a zoo in Poland!

The aim of the project, Fundacja Dodo (The Dodo Foundation), is to stimulate the preservation of endangered species in their natural habitats.

Most of my work as a cartoonist has been for magazines,books, course material or information campaigns. In most cases I am asked to illustrate and commentate on particular themes, subjects, articles or news items. Despite the fact that I provide humorous drawings this can, and often does, involve a fair amount of research. At the very least I have to read AND understand all the texts in order to make jokes about them...even though the humour often comes from deliberately misunderstanding or oversimplifying the subject. I have become quite a specialist in management over the years even though I've almost never had what most people would call a ' proper job'. I have also had to learn, among other things, about local government, TV cameras, canteen food, coffee machines, carers and quality control along with sewers, social housing, street furniture, and sperm donation. Knowledge that mostly gets discarded or forgotten the moment I move on to the next job.

Anyway, currently I have spent a fair amount of time dredging the internet for information and pictures of various animals, some of which I had never even heard of before.

There is plenty of information to be found and much of it makes for interesting reading but my researches have raised a few questions along with the answers. For instance, the Saola, a gazelle-like creature, was only discovered in 1999 and since then it has rarely been seen. 'Rarely seen' does, however, mean that they have been seen more often since 1999 than before that date. So it could be that Saola are flourishing rather than facing extinction!

Along with the Saola the available literature describes several other of the foundation's target species as being exceedingly shy which raises another question: are these creatures really dying out or are they just not going out?

Well,OK, these may be the somewhat distorted reactions you can expect when you let a cartoonist loose on a project. If you are really interested the genuine facts and figures should soon be available for all to see when the English language site is ready, which, I believe, is the main reason for my participation.

The Fundacja is named after the now long extinct Dodo.

Unlike a butterfly, when a Dodo flapped it's wings not very much happened at all.
The Dodo was a large, slow, clumsy and flightless bird.
What I did learn from my online explorations was that it wasn't its size, lack of speed, lack of agility or lack of proper wings that caused this birds extinction. None of these characteristics would have been a problem but for one other property: unfortunately for the Dodo, it tasted really good!