Poor dodo

The ancestors of the dodo flew to Mauritius. There, they had no natural enemies, got larger and larger and lost the ability to fly, in an inverse evolutionary process, so to speak. When the Europeans came to Mauritius, they brought pigs, dogs, monkeys, cats and rats with them. The new immigrants found a ready supply of food in the ground nests of the dodo. Forests clearances by humans did the rest of the job. Within 80 years, the dodo was extinct. Poor dodo! (Chaline, Eric: Fifty Animals that Changed the Course of History. Buffalo, New York: Firefly Books, 2011: 183)