Don't fall for these videos claiming US government is hiding last living dodo

For years, TikTok users have shared dozens of videos claiming that the U.S. "got caught hiding the last dodo bird." Some of these videos made the specific claim that a man discovered the U.S. government was hiding a live specimen of the extinct flightless bird in Virginia, Maryland or another state. 

@snapbotai REAL FOOTAGE AT THE END! ? United States got caught hiding the last Dodo Bird. ? #dodo #usa #mythicalcreature ♬ In Essence - Ka$tro

These videos were not authentic accounts of actual events. Their creators edited together stock images and artificial intelligence (AI) clips with a cartoonlike appearance, rather than actual video or photo footage, to make unsubstantiated claims that the U.S. is hiding a living dodo. Furthermore, the images of the man said to have discovered the supposed hidden dodo differ from clip to clip — as does his name, which varies from "Nathaniel" to "Daniel," as shown in the screenshots below.

(Snopes compilation of TikTok images)

Some of the videos' descriptions also contained labels or hashtags indicating the content was AI-generated.

In other words, none of these videos provides evidence to support the existence of a live dodo. As a result, we've rated this claim false.

Once only found on the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, the dodo was, according to a webpage from the University of Oxford's Natural History Museum, "a large flightless bird" whose physical characteristics are not fully known. The page explains that modern reconstructions and caricatures of the large flightless bird are based on "old pictures and the few bones and skins" left.

The dodo went extinct in the 17th century after sailors who arrived to the island "found that the dodo was very easy to catch," according to the museum's page, which adds:

… even though it didn't taste very nice, many were eaten.

 The dodo's natural habitat was almost completely destroyed after people started settling on Mauritius. And when pigs, cats and monkeys were introduced, they added to the problem by eating the dodo and its eggs.

A 2003 review article published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature reported that Volkert Evertsz was last to make a confirmed sighting of the dodo, scientific name Raphus cucullatus, in 1662 (though accounts of the year vary). The article's authors wrote, "By this time, the dodo had become extremely rare — the previous sighting having been 24 years earlier — but the species probably persisted unseen beyond this date."

Using statistical methods, the researchers found that the dodo's actual extinction date may have been as late as 1690, nearly three decades after the bird's last known sighting.

In 2024, the authors of a systematic review of 400 years of dodo-related literature set out to better understand the biology and life cycle of the iconic bird. The review's abstract read, in part:

The Dodo and its extinct sister species, the Solitaire, are iconic exemplars of the destructive capabilities of humanity. These secondarily terrestrial columbids became extinct within a century of their first encounter with humanity. Their rapid extinction, with little material retained in natural history collections, led 18th and some early 19th century naturalists to believe that these aberrant birds were mythological.

Speaking to Phys.org, one of the review's authors described the dodo as the "first living thing that was recorded as being present and then disappeared."

In 2025, the dodo remains very much extinct, notes the American Museum of Natural History on its website:

The Dodo is a lesson in extinction. Found by Dutch soldiers around 1600 on an island in the Indian Ocean, the Dodo became extinct less than 80 years later because of deforestation, hunting, and destruction of their nests by animals brought to the island by the Dutch.