Blame the Victim
Natural selection has commonly been described as "survival of the fittest". While this often fits with what we would like to believe, it isn't quite true. Those characteristics of plants or animals which are favoured are affected by "current conditions" and, over long periods of time, those plants or animals which have the most favourable characteristics tend to survive.

To take a rather extreme example, the dodo probably became flightless because flight was not helpful on the islands in the Indian Ocean where it developed. When these places were discovered by European explorers, conditions changed too rapidly over a short period of time. To add insult to injury, even scientists of the time put the blame for its rapid decline and eventual disappearance on the dodo itself.

In fact, the word dodo became synonomous with stupidity. However, it was only one of the first species to become extinct as a result of human intervention causing habitat destruction.

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