The living habits and characteristics of elephant birds

The Elephant Bird is a type of large, flightless bird that lives in Madagascar. It has three genera: Elephantornis, Elephantornis genus and Elephantornis genus. It was extinct at least before the 16th century. The elephant bird was once considered the largest bird to have ever existed in the world, with a height of more than three meters and a weight of half a ton, until it was surpassed by the fossil of the terror bird (Phorusrhacidae) in October 2006. Adult birds and eggs of "Longnia" have been discovered one after another, and the long axis of some eggs is even 1 foot long (34cm long). Today, four species are classified under the genus A. hildebrandti, A. gracilis, A. medius and A. maximus (Brodkorb, 1963), but this classification is not entirely without controversy, and some The author of will classify it in the same species A.maximus. Elephant birds belong to the order Paleognatha, and are closely related to ostriches. They are flightless and have no keel ridge on their sternum.

The National Geographic Society in Washington has a bird's nest egg discovered by Louis Madden in 1967. The egg was undamaged and contained the embryonic skeleton of an unborn bird.

The extinction of the elephant bird is related to humans, but it is not due to hunting by them. It is because the new immigrants from Madagascar still live a slash-and-burn life and continue to destroy the forest to open up farmland, making the places where the elephant bird can inhabit become more and more difficult. few.

In the postscript of Jin Yong's martial arts novel "The Legend of the Condor Heroes", Jin Yong stated that the image of the "Condor Heroes" in the book was partly derived from the characteristics of the elephant bird.

animal tags： elephant bird