The Song Of The Dodo Analysis

“The Song of the Dodo” by David Quammen, Is everything he claimed true? The main idea of the book is deciding whether islands cause evolution or extinction, but it’s the sources that are what proves it. In the first chapter he brought up the discoveries of evolution that was written in the journals of Darwin. Darwin’s journals were scientific, however they were only theories on paper.
Not every part of the journals were accurate, thus making the argument weakened. Quammen spoke of exotic animals in exotic places, he spoke of their changes and ask common questions. He wondered how the animals traveled the world and why. Those were answered in the chapter, again weakening his credibility. The next section near end of the chapter he becomes very

opinionated and rhetorical. David Quammen, a well known environmental author, had gone to a subject in which he couldn't comprehend, he questioned God.
Quammen would ask rhetorical questions, because he didn't have the answers himself, as to why God would make every animal perfect for it’s environment. He believed that no one could predict how animals would react in these areas, and said that not even God himself could know the outcome. David Quammen said that if there is a God, then he is a random God. This entire passage was unfactual, uneducated, opinionated, and overall filled with frustration of this concept of God’s perfection. This stunt he tried to pull was unprofessional and yet again made him less credible. However he then turned around by not quoting journals, but quoting scientific books full of facts and credibility. Quammen switched to the very proven fact that extinction is real.
There have been numerous times throughout history where entire species have died off.

Given a good majority of them were due to harmful human activities, a good amount were located on islands. He spoke of scientist who studied the islands and all the effects islands do for the species. David wrote about gigantism and how it can negatively affect them, he spoke of acquiring aquatic features on land animals and it's bad impacts. MOst end in the death of the animals and eventually the whole species. However he then brought up the extraordinary discovery of islands and connected everything together. He had announced the famous “island rule”.
The island rule means that the island does evolve certain animals into its own species, then that species fails and goes extinct. Both island evolution and extinction have been proven, however now they are now connected. The islands cause evolution, the evolution causes the extinction, and thus meaning that the island caused the extinction. Shown by numerous scientist and written books, both are correct, islands cause evolution and extinction.
“The Song of the Dodo” by David Quammen is correct in the fact that islands have an effect, however due to the lack of credibility and even maturity in the first half of the book I cannot say that this book is completely credible source. It is a non-fiction book, but not a believable

one.