The dodo was a species of flightless bird that lived on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. The first record of human interaction with the dodo occurred in 1598, and within 100 years the dodo was extinct due to hunting by humans and other newly introduced invasive species. After the extinction, the word ?dodo? became synonymous with stupidity, implying that the birds lacked the intelligence to avoid or escape extinction. The closest existing relatives of the dodo are pigeons and doves. Researchers at the American Museum of Natural History used computed tomography scans to measure the brain size (?endocranial capacity?) of one of the few existing preserved dodo birds, and to measure the brain sizes (reported in log mm³) in samples of eight birds that are close relatives of dodos (?The First Endocast of the Extinct Dodo and an Anatomical Comparison Amongst Close Relatives,? Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society [2016]: 950?953).

The brain size for the dodo was 4.17 log mm³. The following table contains the brain sizes for the sample of birds from related species (approximate values from a graph in the paper).

Brain Size ........... Brain Size3.08 .......................... 3.523.16 .......................... 3.783.33 .......................... 4.003.35

a. Use the Shiny app output at the bottom of the page to carry out a randomization test of the hypothesis that the population mean brain size for birds that are relatives of the dodo differs from the established dodo brain size of 4.17.

b. What does the result of the test indicate about the brain size of the dodo?

Transcribed Image Text:

Randomization Distribution 120 100 80 60 40 20 3.6 4.2 4.6 Sample Mean Observed Sample Mean Simulation Standard Error Two-Tailed P-value Number of Values in Tail Number of Simulated Samples 1000 3.460 0.116 0.000 Aɔuanba