This week we travel to New Zealand and back in time some 500 years to meet the Moa. Along with the Elephant Bird of Madagascar, the Moa is the other great extinct giant flightless bird from recent history.
Little known fact, the Moa was not a single species, but there was a whole family of them. Currently between 9 and 11 species are recognised that ranged in size from that of a turkey, up to about 3.6 metres. So yes, these were beefy birds.
Coming from New Zealand, we might naturally think of them as the giant cousin of the Kiwi. But the Moa is more closely related to the Tinamous of South America. Whereas the Kiwi is more closely related to the Elephant Bird of Madagascar. Sometimes evolution and continental drift can throw up odd relationships like this.
The Moa also holds the distinction of being the only purely bipedal bird we know of. Birds are tetrapods, they have four limbs. In some birds that decided to go flightless, like the Kiwi, it may look as though they have totally lost their wings, but a small relic always remains. This is true of every bird except the Moa. They are the only bird we have discovered that lost every last vestige of their forelimbs, becoming the only two limbed bird we know of.
In New Zealand, the Moa was a gentle herbivore, but they were so big that almost nothing bothered them. There was one exception however, the mighty Haast’s Eagle: a bird with a wingspan of 3 metres that had especially evolved to prey on the Moa.
For millions of years that was the only thing to hassle the Moa, until an even more deadly predator arrived on the island in around 1300: human. It is speculated that within 100 years of arrival, people had hunted the Moa to extinction. And with their main food source gone, Haast’s Eagle went extinct not long after that.
Like some many fabulous animals, they could not withstand the horror of humanity.
09/07/2023
Photo credit:
1: JA CHIRINOS / SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
2: By George Edward Lodge – Transferred from Commons. (https://archive.org/details/ex…), PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/ind…
3: By John Megahan – Ancient DNA Tells Story of Giant Eagle Evolution. PLoS Biol 3(1): e20. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030020.g001, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/…
Bird of the Week 