Syndactyly is the medical term for webbed or conjoined fingers or toes. In most cases the fingers are connected only by skin. It is rare that the bones are also fused together.
Dodo birds became extinct because of the combination of overhunting by humans and non-native predators that were introduced by humans to their native island. Dodo birds only inhabited the island of Mauritius, where they had no natural predators. Accordingly, the dodo bird had lost the power of flight and possessed few defensive behaviors by the time humans arrived on the island.
Examples from literature. 1  It is as fabulous as the dodo, the salamander, or the phoenix. 2  Its carnivorous enemies among the lower animals, would have cut short the existence of the dodo, even if man had never planted his conquering footsteps upon that island. The dodo of Mauritius was exterminated by swine, whose bipedal descendants have exterminated many other species since that time. There can be no doubt that the dodo was one of those instances, well known to naturalists, of a species, or part of a species, remaining permanently in an undeveloped state.