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Elephant birds: Who killed the largest birds that ever lived?
- ddingus 8y agoAny DNA? Might these be recent enough to bring back?
- yareally 8y agoWe haven't brought back the passenger pigeon or the Carolina Parakeet yet and both went extinct at the Cincinnati Zoo in the early 20th Century.
- eponeponepon 8y agoSeems to me we'd do better to shut the Cincinnati Zoo...
- yareally 8y agoBoth species were doomed to extinction at the point they were housed at the zoo. The passenger pigeon only bred in large flocks and by the time everyone realized they were on the decline, there were no more large flocks. The zoo at this point were just recording the last survivors for posterity's sake.
- patall 8y ago> The passenger pigeon only bred in large flocks and by the time everyone realized they were on the decline, there were no more large flocks. So do penguins, gulls and terns, yet they can be bred in zoos. Also, the big colonies of the passenger pigeon mostly like where a phenomenon of the 19th century (possibly human induced), the effective population size of the species has been shown to have been in the hundreds of thousands range. Oh, and the Carolina parakeet was bred in zoos, even in Europe. Unfortunately they weren't that consistent back then yet.
- craftyguy 8y agoSure, but is that because we cannot do it or because we don't really want to do it? I'd argue that bringing back a the elephant bird would be more exciting (from a 'cool' perspective and scientifically) then bringing back a pigeon or parakeet. There are already dozens (or more?) of species of both of those alive today, with some very close relatives included.
- patall 8y agoFrom what I have heard, there are a number of challenges connected here that have to do that birds are usually not a model organism and we therefore lack certain techniques (and knowledge) on how to handle their cells (especially stem cells) in a laboratory (Not surprising since there is not much medical and therefore financial interest in doing so). The reason why researchers go for those relatively boring species is their boringness: there are closely related species from which you can borrow cells (and eggs) which you than modify. There is no such thing for a huge (another cost factor) animal with no close relative left.
- WiseWeasel 8y agoI'd think it would be more exciting in a 'oh the horror, what have we done' kind of perspective. Those things seem scary as hell.
- ddingus 8y agoSame, yet I would gladly see it done. The idea of bringing something old world into current is compelling, definitely morbid in some sense, and primal. Yeah, not a good mix, but what can I say? This is a want to see happen. I am likely to regret it, but maybe, just maybe it could be a good thing. Somehow.
- tim333 8y agoYeah but they're working on it: >The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback has set ambitious goals to hatch the first generation of new Passenger Pigeons before 2025 and begin trial wild releases in the following 15 years. http://reviverestore.org/projects/the-great-passenger-pigeon-comeback/progress-to-date/ http://reviverestore.org/projects/the-great-passenger-pigeon...
- tim333 8y agoYes DNA. I hope so. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/7405923/Extinct-elephant-bird-of-Madagascar-could-live-again.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/740592...
- ComputerGuru 8y agoEven if we can’t clone them now, we should at the very least sequence their dna to digitize what little there is left of it.
- nonbel 8y agoWere these birds bigger than dinosaurs? https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/the-birds-are-not-dinosaurs-movement/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/the-bi...
- nine_k 8y agoAccording to the modern taxonomy, birds are dinosaurs, with a pretty straight lineage.
- nonbel 8y agoThats what I meant to imply. Dinosaurs are a type of bird that were bigger than "elephant birds", so the headline is (most likely) wrong.
- throwaway2048 8y agoDinosaurs are not a type of bird, just as a rectangle isn't (necessarily) a square.
- wavefunction 8y agoYou have the direction of the time vector descriptor backwards.
- nonbel 8y agoI've never heard of a "time vector descriptor", so what do you mean?
- close04 8y agoBirds are a type of dinosaur called recently avian dinosaur. The other dinosaurs (non-avian dinosaurs) are definitely not a type of bird. So no, the title is not really wrong unless there is a yet undiscovered bird that's even larger. The elephant bird was the biggest bird (or avian-dinosaur) that ever existed. It was smaller than other non-avian dinosaurs but these were not birds so no point comparing. The confusion you are making is sometimes described as politician's syllogism. [0] 1) All birds are dinosaurs 2) All land dinosaurs are dinosaurs 3) Therefore, land dinosaurs are birds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism
- lelf 8y agoMore info http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/new-find-clears-madagascar-s-first-settlers-wiping-out-world-s-largest-bird http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09/new-find-clears-madag... Paper http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/4/9/eaat6925.full.pdf http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/4/9/eaat6925...
- fauigerzigerk 8y agoThe illustration doesn't seem plausible. Their wings would have to look far more bulky to be wide enough to lift their weight.
- eCa 8y agoThey couldn’t fly[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_bird https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_bird
- fauigerzigerk 8y agoOh I see. That explains it.
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- craftyguy 8y agoWhy do you think they flew? The top largest birds (by height and mass) alive today do not fly, and could never fly under their own power.
- lostlogin 8y agoMoa were a massive bird in New Zealand, with some thought to be 4m tall - they didn’t fly. Whilst looking them up I stumbled on the Haast’s Eagle, which hunted Moa. It was huge relative to today’s eagles and hunted Moa. There are accounts from early settlers that may reflect encounters with them.
- craftyguy 8y agoThanks for sharing that, I've never heard of the Haast's Eagle. The ~9ft wing span would be terrifying to see. > Haast's eagles preyed on large, flightless bird species, including the moa, which was up to fifteen times the weight of the eagle.[9] It is estimated to have attacked at speeds up to 80 km/h (50 mph) I wonder if these things attacked the early humans that inhabited New Zealand, before they went extinct.
- qwerty456127 8y agoAs far as I can see from the article the "birds" were of the ostrich kind, not the flying kind we imagine when hearing the word "bird". As far as I know the modern science also says that many dinosaurs that didn't fly also had feathers. So why aren't the other dinosaurs considered "elephant birds" while this creature is?
- avip 8y agoIANAP, but presumably "having feathers" does not make one a bird.
- quadrangle 8y agoBecause even though it's all a continuum, this animal was much closer to modern birds than to dinosaurs based on the various ways these things are classified. For one, it didn't have a dinosaur style jaw and teeth but a bird beak. Where to draw the line isn't easy, it's fuzzy, but I don't think this case is fuzzy. These were birds by every way we discuss what that means today (which never requires flight).
- chr1 8y agoAncestors of ostriches were normal birds that could fly, relation to dinosaurs is more distant.
- Nasrudith 8y agoIt is legacy like many things in zoology like taxonomy. They were thought to be more like giant lizards than birds for a long while even if they couldn't ignore the most obvious convergences. It isn't limited just to ones we know about only through paleontology. There is even a civet genus labeled 'paradoxus' that eats mostly berries and fruit despite being under the carnivora family. The Aristotelian taxonomy was even worse with things like considering beaver a type of fish and poultry as distinct from meat because meat is land animals. Common names are even worse for it which is why the current lineial system exists in the first place like all of the different names for mountain lion. Taxonomy isn't objective science in itself (although it should be based off of it to be of any use) but it is very useful to science. Technically we can reindex the taxonomy and rename any time but it would be such a pain to keep track with multiple systems old and new and all of the controversies that it probably wouldn't be worth it until our understand diverges enough that it loses all meaningfulness. For instance the classical elements of various systems were discarded completely as useless even as an additional layered category. Fire is a state of matter, earth is actually composed of many of the table of elements even more if we don't have metal separate, water is composed of two different elements that appear elsewhere in both air and earth. And the old associations like gold with fire and sun? Completely unfounded. Thus it is pretty much useless as a tool for improving our understanding and limited to a motif. Meanwhile even if DNA testing shows that the line of descent doesn't match up at all reliably with parallel evolution the organization could still be good for rough body shape for instance. Even if to give a counterfactual and deliberately absurd example it later turns out that humans actually evolved directly from an extinct strain of whale filing humanity among apes is still informative in morphology and not wrong in that sense even if the descent aspect was shockingly discreditted.
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