 The last definite account of the " solitaire " of Réunion was Feuilley 's from 1708 , indicating that the species probably became extinct sometime early in the century . In the 1820s , Louis Henri de <unk> asked an old slave about <unk> ( old Dutch word for dodo ) , and was told the bird existed around Saint @-@ Joseph when his father was an infant . This would perhaps be a century earlier , but the account may be unreliable . Cheke and Hume suspect that feral cats initially hunted wildlife in the lowlands and later turned to higher inland areas , which were probably the last stronghold of the Réunion ibis , as they were <unk> by pigs . The species is thought to have been driven to extinction around 1710 – <unk> . 
