island tameness

Island tameness is the tendency of many populations and species of animals living on isolated islands to lose their wariness of potential predators, particularly of large animals. The term is partly synonymous with ecological naïvete, which also has a wider meaning referring to the loss of defensive behaviors and adaptations needed to deal with these "new" predators. Species retain such wariness of predators that exist in their environment, for example a Hawaiian goose retains its wariness of hawks, but lose such behaviors associated with mammals or other predators not found in their historical range. The most famous example is that of the dodo bird, which owed its extinction in a large part to a lack of fear of humans, and many species of penguin - which although wary of sea predators have no real land predator, and therefore are very unafraid and curious towards humans and their dogs.