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.
Â» Until 2007, only fragments of dodo skeleton were available. However, with the discovery of a complete skeleton by some adventurers in a cave in Mauritius in 2007, it has now being estimated that the bird did stand about 3 feet tall and weighed somewhere around 44 pounds.