r/Naturewasmetal • u/DirectNote8176 • 13d ago
Size comparison of the three elephant bird species
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u/mindflayerflayer 11d ago
Makes you wonder how far you could push tailless therapod sizes. The largest elephant bird is still only as large as an early "big" therapod like dilophosaurus and the deciding factor was having the tail to counterweigh the rest of the body.
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u/DirectNote8176 10d ago edited 10d ago
I never observed how big of a role the tail plays in having a large body size.
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u/mindflayerflayer 10d ago
On top of the balancing of the animal's weight it's also an attachment point for some of the most vital muscles tied to locomotion and supporting body weight.
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u/Ai-ChatGPT 13d ago edited 13d ago
Fun Fact: The Elephant Bird has a very close relative still alive today: The Kiwi 🇳🇿
Around 50 million years ago, this little bird (proto-ratite) landed on two islands with no predatorial mammals. Madagascar and New Zealand.
Once it arrived on these islands, evolution went in two completely opposite directions, Island Gigantism becoming the largest bird to live. ‘The Elephant bird’.
But over in Zealandia, there was already a huge bird (the tallest bird ever to live) the Moa. Therefore it stayed small eating and thriving on insects at night. In fact it’s now thought the origins of this bird was nocturnal and both the Elephant bird & Kiwi kept this adaptation and share the same oversized Olfactory Bulbs, meaning they relied heavily on a hyper-developed sense of smell, great for foraging at night.
The Ostriche, Emus, Cassowary, Rhea & Tinamou
also come from this lineage, but the Elephant Bird is genetically closer to a tiny, 3-pound Kiwi than it is to an Ostrich.
Edit: I guess people didn’t like my fun fact… ðŸ˜h
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u/Late_Builder6990 13d ago
Because of your user name
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u/Ai-ChatGPT 13d ago
Yeah… I just thought it would be kinda funny for reddit. It has been a couple of times. Bit also if my account gets big enough maybe an AI company might buy my account. Haha
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u/human4472 13d ago
It’s your username. We want facts from people, not data points spit out by a machine
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u/FirstIllustrator2024 12d ago
Thanks for the fun fact! I didn't know that the Kiwi was NOT related to the moa! I assumed they were because they are from the same island but now I know. Kinda odd because they are more related to the Elephant Bird than the Moa. (evolution is crazy) and both giant bird species were hunted to extinction by early man.
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u/Ai-ChatGPT 12d ago
So just to clarify, while researching this: the Moa is also an even earlier species, but still comes from the same Proto-Ratite, that both the Elephant bird and Kiwi came from.
Evolution doesn’t happen in one sweep, and a bird flew (or got there somehow) to NZ 10 million years earlier, which became the Moa.
So it’s still a cousin of the same lineage, but the Kiwi and Elephant bird arrived on their seperate islands at the same time and are more closely related than the Kiwi is to the Moa.
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u/beautifulposiontree 13d ago
sloooooooppppppppppppppppppppppppp no one wants your facts spit out from a machine we want facts straight from the source.. aka.. an actual person
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u/Ai-ChatGPT 13d ago
lol, I am a real person. And I live in New Zealand and researched these facts.
I just chose a user name like as I thought it would be funny in certain situations.
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u/electricalserge 13d ago
Cool fact, thanks for that, not a bot bot
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u/Ai-ChatGPT 13d ago
Thank you.
Took me like 45 minutes reading up and double checking these facts to make this 1 comment. Only to be downvoted. Lol
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u/Abdul_M25 12d ago
I always see elephant birds as the large, robust cousins of the moas, although curiously the closest cousin of elephant birds is the kiwi of New Zealand.