 Like many animals that evolved in isolation from significant predators , the dodo was entirely fearless of humans . This fearlessness and its inability to fly made the dodo easy prey for sailors . Although some scattered reports describe mass killings of dodos for ships ' provisions , archaeological investigations have found scant evidence of human predation . Bones of at least two dodos were found in caves at Baie du Cap that sheltered fugitive slaves and convicts in the 17th century , which would not have been easily accessible to dodos because of the high , broken terrain . The human population on Mauritius ( an area of 1 @,@ 860 km2 or 720 sq mi ) never exceeded 50 people in the 17th century , but they introduced other animals , including dogs , pigs , cats , rats , and crab @-@ eating macaques , which plundered dodo nests and competed for the limited food resources . At the same time , humans destroyed the forest habitat of the dodos . The impact of the introduced animals on the dodo population , especially the pigs and macaques , is today considered more severe than that of hunting . Rats were perhaps not much of a threat to the nests , since dodos would have been used to dealing with local land crabs . 
