During 2024 and 2025 Colossal Biosciences claim to have de-extincted dire wolves using genetic engineering and a surrogate mother. They now have plans to de-extinct the dodo using its DNA and a chicken as a surrogate mother. They expect dodo 2.0 to be born in 2028. Beth Shapiro is the Team Leader as well as the Chief Scientific Officer at Colossal Bioscinces. She has a long relationship with the dodo. As a PhD student in Oxford she proved the dodo to have been the largest of the pigeon species in 2002. I have nick-named her Mrs Dodo. She lived in Oxford, also home to a man nick-named Mr Dodo.

The city was also the home of the last dodo. In 1755 the Director of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford demanded that a stuffed dodo be burned because it was too musty. Too bad that it was the last dodo in the world., stuffed or otherwise. The Director did not know that the dodo was already extinct. Nobody knew at this time that animals could become extinct. The French naturalist Georges Cuvier proposed in a lecture in 1796 that animals become extinct at the French National Institute. Although the dodo is thought to have become extinct between 1681 and 1690 (the last recorded sighting was in 1662), “The Times” published an epitaph for the dodo in 1833.

It was in Oxford that the dodo came back into the public consciousness. Rev Charles Dodgson taught mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford between 1855 and 1881. He had a stammer and introduced himself to people by saying, “Hello, I am Charles Dodododgson” earning him the nickname Mr Dodo. 

He befriended the Liddell family in April 1856. Henry Liddell was the Dean of Christ Church College. It is an interesting building doubling up as a Cathedral and a student chaplaincy. He walked and rowed with the ten years old Alice Liddell on the River Thames and they invented stories together. They used animals to represent the adults in their lives. Henry Liddell, Alice’s father, was represented by a rabbit. In life he was often late for appointments and people joked about him running round shouting, "I’m late! I’m late!” In this guise Henry Liddell became the rabbit in Alice and Wonderland and the dodo was Charles Dodgson himself. In 1865 he published the book under the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll but really it was a joint effort with Alice; a product of their friendship.

It was no secret that Dodgson preferred the company of children to adults because of his stammer. He found children to be less judgmental. He would not be controversial had he not made photographs of Alice Liddell and other girls that we would now call indecent images. It is likely that Charles Dodgson was what we now call a minor attracted person. This has provoked much soul searching. Although the book is the most popular children’s book in the world, many question if it should be stored in schools or even talked about! It adds to the complication that in old age, Alice Liddell described Charles Dodgson as “the best friend that a child could have”.

There are certain other questions in my mind. 

• Would Colossal Biosciences still be interested in de-extincting the dodo without Charles Dodgson and Alice in Wonderland? Colossal Biosciences also have de-extinction projects for the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger and the dire wolf. 
• Could it be that like the dodo, the woolly mammoth is planned for de-extinction because it appeared in children’s books? 
• Could Charles Dodgson and Alice Liddell be given some of the credit for the de-extinction of the dodo? 
• Could Charles Dodgson and Beth Shapiro go down in history as Mr and Mrs Dodo?