OUTSIDE my rain-battered hotel veranda a cyclone is clobbering the coast of Mauritius. But I am much too busy enjoying one of the local beauties to notice 150mph fly-pasts by palm fronds, beach ...

No other animal is as inexorably linked with extinction as the dodo, an odd-looking flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean until the late 17th century.

Wading birds, such as flamingos and ibises, have long, thin, featherless legs that make it easy to release heat from their bodies. When the blood circulates up and down their legs, heat dissipates ...