Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for a classic episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This one is about the moa of
Speaker 1: New Zealand. Uh, one of your one of your great
Speaker 1: loves of the past year. Yeah, this one was really
Speaker 1: this is a really fun topic to get into. This
Speaker 1: is gonna be a two parter um. I I will
Speaker 1: point out that we didn't one thing. We didn't really
Speaker 1: get into the and these episodes where changes in our
Speaker 1: understanding of the sort of the stature of the moa,
Speaker 1: exactly how it stood and how tall it would actually be. Uh.
Speaker 1: We ended up addressing that, I think in a subsequent
Speaker 1: listener mail episode. But uh, but but I think everything
Speaker 1: still holds up. I don't think any any MOA experts
Speaker 1: or MOA's uh had any any other corrections rather than
Speaker 1: to to point out that we didn't really touch on
Speaker 1: that particular issue and these initial two episodes. Wait, So
Speaker 1: basically the deal is that maybe maybe the moa was
Speaker 1: more often bent over forwards rather than rather than standing
Speaker 1: up straight. Yeah, yeah, I guess. Yeah, it's one of those, um,
Speaker 1: those situations that come up from time to time in
Speaker 1: our understanding of fossils, you know, like it's one thing
Speaker 1: to put the bones together, but another to actually uh
Speaker 1: display them or position them, uh in a way that
Speaker 1: would be in keeping with the actual stature of the animal.
Speaker 1: For instance, we see this in our changing understanding of
Speaker 1: t rex is over time. You know, you look back
Speaker 1: at the old illustrations of t rexes, and there were
Speaker 1: a lot more vertical, a lot more erect. But if
Speaker 1: you look at more recent depictions of how a t
Speaker 1: rex would stand, you know, it's more horizontal. It's more
Speaker 1: in keeping with the way a chicken carries itself. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll keep that in mind. But otherwise, uh, let's let's
Speaker 1: head in Welcome Too to Blow Your Mind production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And to uh introduce today's episode, I thought maybe we
Speaker 1: should begin by reading a poem. Robert or you game,
Speaker 1: I'm game for a little little poetry. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: not just poetry, it's moetry. I did not make that
Speaker 1: joke in my head yet, but maybe because I'm not
Speaker 1: as perverse as you. This is by the New Zealand
Speaker 1: poet Alan kerr Now's was originally published in nineteen and
Speaker 1: it's called The Skeleton of the Great Moa in Canterbury Museum,
Speaker 1: christ Church. The Skeleton of the Moa, on iron crutches,
Speaker 1: broods over no great waste, deprivate swamp was where this
Speaker 1: tree grew feathers once that hatches its dusty clutch and
Speaker 1: guards them from the damp. Interesting failure to adapt on
Speaker 1: islands taller but not more fallen than I, who come
Speaker 1: bone to his bone. Peculiarly New Zealand's The eyes of
Speaker 1: children flicker around this tomb under the skylights, wonder at
Speaker 1: the huge egg found in a thousand pieces, piece together,
Speaker 1: but with less patients than the bones that dug in
Speaker 1: time deep shelter against the ocean weather. Not I, some
Speaker 1: child born in a marvelous year will learn the trick
Speaker 1: of standing upright here. You can find that poem, by
Speaker 1: the way, in the nineteen seventy nine Anthology and Anthology
Speaker 1: of twentieth century New Zealand Poetry. And yeah, I really
Speaker 1: love the cadence of that poem. And also I feel
Speaker 1: like it effectively captures the weird beauty of these reassembled
Speaker 1: skeleton remains one sees of the mighty moa. You know,
Speaker 1: we just did Marianne Moore in the paper Nautilus. This
Speaker 1: is another poem like that. I love a good poem
Speaker 1: that genuinely ponders biology like this deals with the evolutionary
Speaker 1: adaptation of the moa, the flightless birds of New Zealand,
Speaker 1: uh and and the idea of learning the trick of
Speaker 1: standing upright. Yeah, now, this is gonna be a fun
Speaker 1: couple of episodes. I'm really excited about these episodes. So
Speaker 1: I think that the moa is one of the things
Speaker 1: that's really keeping me going right now, getting to research,
Speaker 1: read about the moa, and envision the moa. Uh No,
Speaker 1: no matter what where I don't know where you are
Speaker 1: out there, if you're listening to this, where you are
Speaker 1: in your previous understanding of of the moa and other
Speaker 1: flightless birds. But this is a This is a wonderful
Speaker 1: and weird story that has as a number of number
Speaker 1: of connections to things we've talked about in the past,
Speaker 1: but but also some some new angles. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about evolution. We're gonna be talking about first contact
Speaker 1: between man and beast. It's a it's gonna be a
Speaker 1: fun ride. And there's no better place to start a
Speaker 1: fun ride than in New Zealand, the land of avian decadence,
Speaker 1: that's right, and the place where the mammal is truly debase.
Speaker 1: That's right because you, I know, obviously the rise of
Speaker 1: mammals is one of evolutions most celebrated victory stories, right
Speaker 1: because in part because we are, of course mammals ourselves,
Speaker 1: and there's perhaps a sense of of the gods and
Speaker 1: the primordial titans when we consider the age of the
Speaker 1: dinosaurs that came before us in our own mammalian age
Speaker 1: that we have, you know, ascended in now. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's very much a case of when you
Speaker 1: look at the Cretaceous paleogy and extinction event that caused
Speaker 1: the demise of the non avian dinosaurs, Uh, it's quite
Speaker 1: clear that their loss was our gain, yes, but it
Speaker 1: was wasn't only our gain. It was also the gain
Speaker 1: of of birds, and we often neglect the just the
Speaker 1: exceptional dominance of birds for theirs is the the legacy
Speaker 1: of the of the dinosaur. And then they remain highly
Speaker 1: successful and widespread to this day. They remain masters of
Speaker 1: the air, frequent masters of the water, and sometimes masters
Speaker 1: of the land as well. Now, why would birds be
Speaker 1: the masters of the land, Like they've got the air
Speaker 1: that seems so much better than the land, why even
Speaker 1: bother with the land? Well, of course, the obvious answer
Speaker 1: there is that is that to be a master of
Speaker 1: the of the air requires a great deal of energy,
Speaker 1: and if you don't have to fly around, you quickly
Speaker 1: find reasons not to Evolutionarily speaking, of course, also if
Speaker 1: we're talking about mammals and avian dinosaurs or birds, why
Speaker 1: exactly was it that the loss of the dinosaurs was
Speaker 1: the gain of these other clades. Well, because suddenly you
Speaker 1: have all of these uh, these niches in the in
Speaker 1: the in in in the in the environment that open up. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's suddenly a bird can can occupy, or various creatures
Speaker 1: have the ability to occupy mammals included. But this is
Speaker 1: where we see the emergence of a number of these
Speaker 1: different flightless birds. This is where we see the emergence
Speaker 1: of the terror birds and the demon ducks. Uh. And
Speaker 1: we'll get into some more examples of flightless birds as
Speaker 1: we go. Uh, but yeah, to be sure, we still
Speaker 1: have some amazing flightless land birds with us today, and
Speaker 1: some of them are are quite enormous. The largest, of course,
Speaker 1: is the ostrich. There are two species remaining. There was
Speaker 1: a third, the Asian ostrich, that went extinct roughly six
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. Yeah. The two extant species are the
Speaker 1: common ostrich and the Somali ostrich, and they're both native
Speaker 1: to Africa. Yeah, and I sometimes I feel like we
Speaker 1: sometimes over look how cool ostriches are. I find that
Speaker 1: it's zoos they you know, for one thing, it's a
Speaker 1: zoo habitat, and and you know it's it's so you're
Speaker 1: seeing an ostrich in a fenced in area. But then
Speaker 1: sometimes the ostrich is in there with a giraffe, which
Speaker 1: seems particularly unfair because the giraffe, of course, is the
Speaker 1: is the tallestum extant mammal that we have, And it
Speaker 1: feels kind of like a dirty trick to showcase the
Speaker 1: world's the world's tallest extant bird with the tallest mammal
Speaker 1: which towers over it. Right, It's like I'm trying to
Speaker 1: show off my muscles, but then you put me next
Speaker 1: to a gorilla. Yeah. But but we have some other
Speaker 1: wonderful examples of flightless birds uh elsewhere. For instance, we
Speaker 1: have EMUs, which are very fascinating. You get a chance
Speaker 1: to just look at an emu, just watch an emu
Speaker 1: as it goes about its business. It's it's remarkable. The
Speaker 1: castlewary is one of my favorites mine too. There's a
Speaker 1: castle wary here at the Atlanta Zoo. Yes, Cecil, Cecil
Speaker 1: the cast Wary, who we we've talked on the show
Speaker 1: before with friend Jason Ward here in town about Cecil
Speaker 1: the Cassowary. Who remember Jason telling us that it's dung
Speaker 1: is very like fragrant and kind of smells of fruit.
Speaker 1: Even though it is the I mean not to demonize animals,
Speaker 1: but when you get up close to it, it is
Speaker 1: a horrifying beast. Like it's beautiful. Its colors are beautiful.
Speaker 1: It has the blue and the red and the black feathers.
Speaker 1: It's a gorgeous animal. But also if you look at
Speaker 1: its foot, it's foot looks like a puppet from a
Speaker 1: monster movie. You know it is. It is just a
Speaker 1: killing thing. It's got these claws and this scaly, scabby skin. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a tongue twister. But yeah, look at a cassowary
Speaker 1: up close sometime if you just want to be terrified
Speaker 1: and audit nature. Indeed, yeah, they they can. They can't
Speaker 1: prove quite deadly if you know, the human comes into
Speaker 1: close contact with them and there they begin engaging in
Speaker 1: a defensive behavior. Oh yeah, don't try to look at
Speaker 1: their feet up close if there is not a like
Speaker 1: area between you. Yeah. Of course we have other flightless
Speaker 1: birds who consider one of the more amazing ones. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's the key we of New Zealand um, the nocturnal
Speaker 1: ground bird. All of these birds are what we call rattites,
Speaker 1: a diverse group of flightless birds that were widespread across
Speaker 1: the scattered fragments of the supercontinent Gondwana uh and the
Speaker 1: and their dominance is waned over time, certainly with the
Speaker 1: rise of Homo sapiens. We still have all these various
Speaker 1: examples that still remain today. Yeah, and you find you
Speaker 1: find large flightless birds, well actually large and small flightless
Speaker 1: birds everywhere from New Zealand to South America. You know.
Speaker 1: Then that's without even getting into the the obvious example
Speaker 1: of just other flightless birds. There's also the penguin of course,
Speaker 1: but well, this raises the question why do we have
Speaker 1: flightless birds all over the place like this? Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties there was a wonderfully titled theory
Speaker 1: MOA's arc, which would assume that all of these ra
Speaker 1: tides descended from a common ancestor. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: the idea here is that a flighted ancestor became flightless
Speaker 1: on god Dwana, and then as the supercontinent split, this
Speaker 1: one flightless ancestor UH diverged into all these different flightless species. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you get one instance of these birds descending from
Speaker 1: an ancestor and becoming flightless, and then the flightless one
Speaker 1: goes all over the place, and then there's continental drift
Speaker 1: to supercontinent splits up, and the flightless descendants of that
Speaker 1: one ancestor all go off into different places and evolve
Speaker 1: in different directions, and they become everything from the ostrich
Speaker 1: to the key we to the moa. Right. But one
Speaker 1: of the issues with this, UH, this idea is that
Speaker 1: this would mean we'd expect something we'd expect, say in
Speaker 1: New Zealand, we'd expect the moa and the Kiwi to
Speaker 1: be closely related to each other. We'd expect that any
Speaker 1: any of these ratites that live close together would also
Speaker 1: be closely related, but subsquent DNA studies have revealed that
Speaker 1: this was not the case. Instead of MOA's ark, the
Speaker 1: model seems to be one of numerous cases of flighted
Speaker 1: to flightless evolution around the world. So again, convergent evolution. Uh.
Speaker 1: This repeated instance of a flighted bird evolving into a
Speaker 1: bird that doesn't fly, which seems so strange of a
Speaker 1: of a choice for evolution to make. I mean not
Speaker 1: to personify it too much, but but what is the
Speaker 1: advantage there? I think we alluded to this earlier. One
Speaker 1: of the main theories about this is that it's an
Speaker 1: energy advantage. If a bird doesn't need to fly, then
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to make huge pectoral muscles capable flapping
Speaker 1: wings that can get it into the air. And if
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to make those big muscles, it can
Speaker 1: spend that energy on something else, or it can just
Speaker 1: survive on less food. Yeah. Uh, And it can have
Speaker 1: just like a smaller it can have less of a
Speaker 1: basal metabolic rate. And we've we've talked on the show
Speaker 1: pretty recently about birds having a pretty high BMR. So, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is basically the reason why we see the rise
Speaker 1: of these various flightless birds in you know, all corners
Speaker 1: of the world really. But then of course a number
Speaker 1: of them end up falling away, and of course we'll
Speaker 1: get into the details of of of the fall of
Speaker 1: the moa in these episodes. Uh, in the case of
Speaker 1: the moa and in the case of the elephant bird,
Speaker 1: it's it's the encountering human beings that did the trick. Yes,
Speaker 1: once again, human beings seem to be a sort of
Speaker 1: anomaly in the fossil record in the evolutionary story. Once
Speaker 1: we enter the picture, things tend to go haywire. But
Speaker 1: another question is coming back to what we were just
Speaker 1: talking about, like the energy considerations in losing flight. So
Speaker 1: it is clear that you can save a lot of
Speaker 1: energy by not being a flying bird if you don't
Speaker 1: need to fly, But in what case what a bird
Speaker 1: not need to fly? Shouldn't flying always help a bird
Speaker 1: to survive? Well, basically it comes down to, like like
Speaker 1: we said earlier, the death of the dinosaurs creating these
Speaker 1: these holes for these niches for it in the environment.
Speaker 1: You need a place where I mean to to use
Speaker 1: a very simple, even tacki metaphor here. For birds, they
Speaker 1: need a place to land, uh, in a place it's
Speaker 1: not already occupied by say a highly successful dinosaur or
Speaker 1: highly highly successful mammal. And so there there are corners
Speaker 1: of the world uh you know, other shards of Gondwana
Speaker 1: where the the the idea of a kingdom of the
Speaker 1: birds remained at least partially unchallenged by mammalian usurpers. Like
Speaker 1: nothing came nothing was already there to keep the bird
Speaker 1: from landing, and nothing came up to to erase it
Speaker 1: from the ecosystem. Um. For instance, there's the island of Madagascar,
Speaker 1: which enjoyed something like eighty eight million years of isolation,
Speaker 1: during which it fostered various forms of lemur, as well
Speaker 1: as the massive elephant bird uh, not only a rattite
Speaker 1: but often considered the largest known rattite to ever walk
Speaker 1: the earth. But then there's also far are flung New Zealand,
Speaker 1: which enjoyed an amazing degree of freedom as well from
Speaker 1: the mammalian revolution, well until roughly um c e with
Speaker 1: the arrival of human beings. Now that's not to say
Speaker 1: they were completely free of mammals. That believe they're too extinct.
Speaker 1: Primitive mammals known only as the Saint Bathans mammal that
Speaker 1: are present in the in the fossil record from the Miocene. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: the only way for a mammal to get to New
Speaker 1: Zealand was to fly there or to swim there. So
Speaker 1: you'd have this huge island that's got birds on it,
Speaker 1: but does not have any large mammalian predators. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have any lions, it doesn't have any wolves, it doesn't
Speaker 1: have any foxes anything for a bird to need to
Speaker 1: fly and escape from. Yeah, so if you don't have
Speaker 1: a predator you have to fly and escape from, why
Speaker 1: even keep making wings? Exactly? You just you land and
Speaker 1: you start filling those niches. There's no buffalo there, no
Speaker 1: horses again, no wolves. And then the as far as
Speaker 1: the other mammals, the ones that have swam there. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're talking about seals, sea lions, whales out in the
Speaker 1: waters around New Zealand. And they they're they're they're not
Speaker 1: gonna invade the forest anytime soon. Uh, they're doing just fine.
Speaker 1: And then other than that, we have bats. Bats flew
Speaker 1: to New Zealand where we do see you do see
Speaker 1: an interest in case where where the bats that come
Speaker 1: to New Zealand end up spending more time on the
Speaker 1: ground than you see elsewhere in the world, particular the
Speaker 1: New Zealand lesser short tailed bat, which spends a lot
Speaker 1: of its time foraging on the forest floor crawling around, um,
Speaker 1: basically taking on a far more terrestrial role than bats
Speaker 1: employee elsewhere. Again, this would make sense as an evolutionary
Speaker 1: adaptation if there's just not a lot of stuff to
Speaker 1: worry about on the ground like there is everywhere else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we mentioned the kiwi earlier, Like the kiwi is
Speaker 1: an example of a ground dwelling bird. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it goes around at night, it eats things like worms,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing there's nothing like a mole there. There
Speaker 1: are no moles to fill that niche in the environment. Uh.
Speaker 1: Therefore the kiwi is is taking that role on even
Speaker 1: though it is a bird. Now you do see some
Speaker 1: cases where reptiles or gastropods are also you know, filling
Speaker 1: in these these niches in the environment in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: But for the most part, the birds are the real
Speaker 1: stars here. Um. We mentioned the kiwi and there are
Speaker 1: there are numerous other examples of flightless birds in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: There's a There are various extant species that we still find,
Speaker 1: such as the South Island tacky heat and then there's
Speaker 1: also a flightless bird known as the Weka. But the
Speaker 1: most amazing examples are the nine now extinct species of moa,
Speaker 1: including the giant moa that used to uh To to
Speaker 1: exert their dominance over New Zealand. Well, maybe we should
Speaker 1: take a break and then when we come back we
Speaker 1: can talk about this giant bird. Alright, we're back, So
Speaker 1: we just introduced the character of the moa. This I
Speaker 1: guess we alluded to a little bit earlier. But this
Speaker 1: giant flightless bird that used to inhabit New Zealand, that's right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were nine different nine different species are known to exist.
Speaker 1: There's the upland moa, the little bush moa, and I
Speaker 1: have to stress the little bush moa was still one
Speaker 1: point three meters or four point three ft tall, so
Speaker 1: it's still the sizeable bird. Wait is it now? Is
Speaker 1: it the little bush moa or the little bush moa? Uh?
Speaker 1: The little bush moa sometimes just referred to as the
Speaker 1: bush moa. I'm just trying to think. I mean, is
Speaker 1: it like a bush moa that's little or is it
Speaker 1: being compared to a little bush or something? Oh, I
Speaker 1: think it basically lived in the bush bush mooa would
Speaker 1: have would have lived more in the rainforest. So essentially
Speaker 1: the moa is so successful. You have all you have
Speaker 1: like nine different varieties and different parts of New Zealand,
Speaker 1: different sizes. But the two largest word dinormous robustus which
Speaker 1: means robust, strange bird and dinormous novels O Lindia. So
Speaker 1: we're largely gonna be talking about those two because they
Speaker 1: were the biggest. We're talking about moa that reached the
Speaker 1: heights of three point six meters or twelve feet tall,
Speaker 1: that's with the neck outstretched and there with with estimated
Speaker 1: weights of two or five and ten pounds. So these
Speaker 1: were these were sizeable critters. They looked rather like an
Speaker 1: enormous emu. So if you've seen an emu in in person,
Speaker 1: you have like a good starting point for imagining them.
Speaker 1: Like a wide, kind of shaggy feathery body on long,
Speaker 1: uh you know, lethal looking legs with these great claws
Speaker 1: at the end and a long snaking neck you know,
Speaker 1: almost like a like a like a like an elephant's
Speaker 1: trunk that leads a two comparatively small head. Yes, and
Speaker 1: the skeletons. It's almost like a comically small looking head
Speaker 1: compared to the giganticness of its body. But so another
Speaker 1: one thing I would wonder about, of course, is Okay, well,
Speaker 1: we know it's probably flightless, but what does it do
Speaker 1: with its wings? Does have a little a little like
Speaker 1: t rex arm talons up there, or what's happening with
Speaker 1: the wings? Well, that's that's typically what you expect, right.
Speaker 1: Flightless birds typically have at least vestigial wings, a little
Speaker 1: shrunken remnants of their long neglected flying limbs. Uh. Sometimes,
Speaker 1: as with an ostrich, there's still some sort of a
Speaker 1: use for these wings. The ostrich uses it's it's so
Speaker 1: it's little wings there to stabilize them when they run
Speaker 1: and to aid in courtship displays, even though there you know,
Speaker 1: they do not produce flight at all. Right, Well, I
Speaker 1: mean you can see, uh, some birds that are thought
Speaker 1: to be flightless actually do kind of glide near to
Speaker 1: the ground. Some like chickens, can use their wings to
Speaker 1: you know, kind of glide around near the ground, right,
Speaker 1: and be even failing that, like sometimes there's some purpose,
Speaker 1: even if it's a display, right, And even if there's
Speaker 1: not a purpose, you might expect to find, as with
Speaker 1: other flightless birds, to find some vestigial remain of that limb,
Speaker 1: you know, like little bones or something. But the moa
Speaker 1: doesn't even have vestigial wings. There are no little not
Speaker 1: like even like shrunken bones that are left over. There
Speaker 1: is no trace of their wings at all. They have
Speaker 1: simply been erased through their evolution. That's creepy, It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's amazing, it's it's it's one of the very few
Speaker 1: known creatures to possess only two limbs. The only other
Speaker 1: creatures that I could run across that were in a
Speaker 1: similar situation at all are the Mexican mole lizard and
Speaker 1: the Serenada salamanders. Both of these are cases where creature
Speaker 1: has lost its hind legs and retains its its front limbs.
Speaker 1: But you won't find any mammals that are like this.
Speaker 1: Even the hind legs of the great whales remain in
Speaker 1: this digital form um. No, you find no other birds,
Speaker 1: no dinosaurs, just these nine species of giant land birds,
Speaker 1: even the t rex. So it's you know, famously small
Speaker 1: um four limbs. So we've we've discussed the very theories
Speaker 1: for why they kept even those those tiny limbs on
Speaker 1: the show before. But even the t rex still has
Speaker 1: little little arms. The moa has no arms, no, no
Speaker 1: wings at all. It's just such a strange creature. The
Speaker 1: other day, I was imagining it as a kind of
Speaker 1: biological unic cycle. Yeah, it's it's so weird. It's it's
Speaker 1: like some of the illustrations look oddly huggable, but it
Speaker 1: has no arms, it has no wings, like there's nothing.
Speaker 1: I kept thinking, like, why does this? Why is this
Speaker 1: amaze me? So? And I think part of it is
Speaker 1: that when we think about animals. So I've noticed when
Speaker 1: when children think about animals, they often embody the animal.
Speaker 1: You know, they have to act like the animal, and
Speaker 1: you know, pandomimement and so forth is a fascinating tendency.
Speaker 1: By the way, why do they naturally do that? But
Speaker 1: I think even if we're not like actually moving our
Speaker 1: bodies around, when we look at animal, there's part of
Speaker 1: us that like puts ourselves in its body, and we
Speaker 1: imagine our limbs as its slims. And this creature has
Speaker 1: has no, uh, nothing like arms at all. So if
Speaker 1: you're you're trying to get this in your head, just
Speaker 1: you know, stop. If you have a chance, look up
Speaker 1: some images of the moa, of its skeletal remains, and
Speaker 1: also reconstructions of what it would have looked like, and
Speaker 1: just focus on the fact that it has no vestigial wings.
Speaker 1: It's just so wonderfully weird. Now. I know you said
Speaker 1: it it looks huggable, and I sort of agree, but
Speaker 1: I do want to stress if they actually recreate these
Speaker 1: things and bring them back from extinction, do not try
Speaker 1: to hug them. No. No, it's a very bad idea. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we discussed how potentially lethal the castle areas, and the
Speaker 1: same can be said of the ostrich So I think
Speaker 1: without a doubt the moa could do some serious damage
Speaker 1: or still around to kick you. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to look up some images
Speaker 1: of the moa or just get additional information about them,
Speaker 1: I highly recommend checking out New Zealand Birds Online, created
Speaker 1: by ornithologist Colin ms kelly. It's a great Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's great. It's one of the sources we use for
Speaker 1: these three episodes. Uh, and you'll find you find it
Speaker 1: an in z birds online dot org dot in z
Speaker 1: and if you go to the search bar and you
Speaker 1: type in moa, you'll get pictures of all nine varieties.
Speaker 1: Illustrations of all nine varieties of moa. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting about the moa is we often
Speaker 1: tend to think, okay, where there are large land dwelling animals,
Speaker 1: they often tend to be few in number. Right but
Speaker 1: the but for a long time, New Zealand was kind
Speaker 1: of the land of the moa, right Yeah, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: moa where New Zealand's dominant land vertebrates and dominant herbivores.
Speaker 1: So they basically went went around consuming twigs, leaves, flowers, seeds,
Speaker 1: and berries from a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and vines.
Speaker 1: They also ate um, mushrooms, which we'll get into a
Speaker 1: little later. Uh. They were able to process a highly
Speaker 1: fibrous diet due in part to large gizzard stones and
Speaker 1: tough beak, so that those gizzard stones were involved in
Speaker 1: some great curses probably so excellent magical items. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so they're they're basically every again, nine different varieties, like
Speaker 1: basically adapting over time to the different environments of New Zealand.
Speaker 1: And uh, they laid enormous eggs and are suspected to
Speaker 1: have produced I think one or two per breeding season,
Speaker 1: and the incubation period was likely longer than two months.
Speaker 1: So big birds, big eggs, um more of a time
Speaker 1: investment in a limited number of eggs, and the male
Speaker 1: likely incubated the eggs, as this is what is seen
Speaker 1: in extent ratites. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: just because it was the dominant land organism doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it was completely unopposed that it was off the predation
Speaker 1: of hook because again, this is the world of birds,
Speaker 1: and and when you think of birds, you probably think
Speaker 1: of a number of different flesh eating varieties. And so
Speaker 1: the moa too had to contend with a my at
Speaker 1: avian predator, and that predator is the largest eagle to
Speaker 1: ever live. Right, So at this point, I want to
Speaker 1: briefly come to one of our favorite subjects, which is monsters.
Speaker 1: Why are there so many monster movies about giant spiders
Speaker 1: but not about giant lions? Uh, with a lion is
Speaker 1: already large enough, right, yeah, exactly. So I've got a
Speaker 1: hypothesis here. I think humans, whether through instinct or learning
Speaker 1: or combination, of both do a lot of intuitive phylogenetic
Speaker 1: sorting of predatory threat imagery. So the idea of a
Speaker 1: large cat that kills and eats you is in fact terrifying,
Speaker 1: but it's not especially unusual in the terms we've talked
Speaker 1: about on the show before, in the terms of cognitive
Speaker 1: science of religion, it's not even minimally counterintuitive. It's just
Speaker 1: sort of a fact of nature. So it would be
Speaker 1: terrifying if you were really faced with it. But it's
Speaker 1: also not a particularly arresting image in the memory, and
Speaker 1: that it doesn't stand out. I mean, I'm sure it
Speaker 1: would be a memory if it actually happened you, but
Speaker 1: probably not in terms of fictional storytelling. Compared to something
Speaker 1: like a giant spider, A large man eating spider is
Speaker 1: definitely counterintuitive. It's not something found in nature, and because
Speaker 1: the image is unusual, it sticks in the mind and
Speaker 1: captivates our fear. And I have to think about this
Speaker 1: for a while. Like the idea of a human being
Speaker 1: eaten by an invertebrate like an insect or an arachnid
Speaker 1: not only feels scary, it feels perverse. It violates the
Speaker 1: natural order. In biblical terms, I think this is what
Speaker 1: would be called an abomination, And so I think our
Speaker 1: brains do this kind of unconscious threat math a lot.
Speaker 1: We sort potential threats from animals or organisms more generally
Speaker 1: by morphology or body shape, which is a simple way
Speaker 1: of sorting them along evolutionary relationships. Large carnivorous mammal shapes
Speaker 1: are natural predators. They are genuinely threatening in reality, but
Speaker 1: less captivating of the terrified imagination. And I think the
Speaker 1: same goes for large reptilian shapes like crocodiles or sharks
Speaker 1: or whatever. But here's another phylogenetic or morphological branch of
Speaker 1: potential threats. How about birds. I think we intuitively sort
Speaker 1: birds into the non predator pile, right, Like we prey
Speaker 1: on birds, they don't prey on us, right, Yeah, for
Speaker 1: the most part. I mean, now, to come back to
Speaker 1: the cassawary and the ostrich Like, clearly, these are both
Speaker 1: potentially dangerous animals that they're encountered in the wild, but
Speaker 1: they are you know, they're kind of exceptions from the rule.
Speaker 1: They are a rather different rate of bird than the
Speaker 1: the sort of bird that most of us are going
Speaker 1: to encounter on a daily basis, right, And they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be trying to hunt us. Like, if we encountered one,
Speaker 1: you know, a cassowary in the wild and it was
Speaker 1: being aggressive, that would probably be it. You know, from
Speaker 1: its point of view, it's acting in defense. Right now,
Speaker 1: if we were to travel in time back to the
Speaker 1: age of the terror birds and the demon ducks, and
Speaker 1: that would be a little would be a different scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I would say that that age might go a lot,
Speaker 1: it might come a lot more recently into his story.
Speaker 1: Then we would think, uh so, maybe this, this intuitive
Speaker 1: sorting about birds is one of the main reasons movies
Speaker 1: that use dinosaurs as monsters resist putting feathers on them, right,
Speaker 1: even though many predatory dinosaurs probably had feathers, we associate
Speaker 1: feathers with birds, and birds are generally not thought of
Speaker 1: as scary, right, Yeah, when, for instance, when let's think
Speaker 1: of all the times feathers are used for comedic effect, right,
Speaker 1: like a feather, pillow, feathers, uh, you know, stuck to
Speaker 1: a person after you know, something sticky has has has
Speaker 1: gotten on them, that sort of thing. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: there's that. But then on the other hand, and pretty
Speaker 1: much in exactly the opposite direction, of what I just said,
Speaker 1: we want to think again about the counterintuitive thing. A
Speaker 1: lot of times monsters are great because they violate these categories.
Speaker 1: You know, no spider actually preys on us in the wild,
Speaker 1: but we love the giant killer spider idea that sticks
Speaker 1: in the memory. There are a lot of stories about it,
Speaker 1: and there are stories of giant predatory birds that do
Speaker 1: show up in monster mythology all around the world. There's
Speaker 1: the Rock, the cocketry Ice, the winged on Zoo from
Speaker 1: Sumerian and Babylonian myth Like do you remember how in
Speaker 1: Bander Snatch it says that the demon packs is the
Speaker 1: thief of destiny. The humanoid bird monster on Zoo is
Speaker 1: the original thief of destiny. Do you know about the story?
Speaker 1: So in this there's this ancient Accadian epic where on
Speaker 1: Zoo the bird, the humanoid bird monster steals something called
Speaker 1: the Tablet of Destiny from the King of the Gods.
Speaker 1: And the Tablet of Destiny is kind of like this
Speaker 1: great law book that's sort of a like the permanent
Speaker 1: record of everybody. It's got like all of their you know,
Speaker 1: the I don't know, all their lawbreaking or whatever written
Speaker 1: down in it. And possessing this document, this tablet gives
Speaker 1: you the power to rule the world. And so when
Speaker 1: on Zoo the bird monster steals it, he has to
Speaker 1: be destroyed, I think by Marduk. Well that's what Marduk's for, right,
Speaker 1: It says that's pretty much his job. I mean Marduke.
Speaker 1: It's funny. Marduk is the hero of the story. But
Speaker 1: in in my feeling, mar Duke's also. He's often kind
Speaker 1: of the party pooper, Like there's a great monster getting
Speaker 1: up to no good and then mar Duke comes in
Speaker 1: and just puts a lid on everything. Yeah, he's the
Speaker 1: humanoid figure that that that gets rid of the interesting characters.
Speaker 1: He's like the assistant principle that comes in and stops
Speaker 1: the party. Um. But so I think the bird as
Speaker 1: man eater story it does pass the minimally counterintuitive test
Speaker 1: for mythological resilience. If a giant hawk could swoop down
Speaker 1: from the sky and bite your head off, that image
Speaker 1: that makes a good story that would stick in your memory. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how exactly that goes in conflict with
Speaker 1: the fact that, like people won't put feathers on dinosaurs
Speaker 1: and movies because they're not scary enough. Maybe maybe these
Speaker 1: things two things are just both true and in competition
Speaker 1: with each other. Like the feathered monster has a cognitive
Speaker 1: advantage because it's more counterintuitive, stands out in memory, but
Speaker 1: the scaly monster has a cognitive advantage because it's physical
Speaker 1: features are more naturally prone to activate our threat responses.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you think is going on there,
Speaker 1: but I, as we we love to think about monsters,
Speaker 1: and I think that tension is interesting. Yeah, and and
Speaker 1: and again we're talking about the idea of monstrous birds here,
Speaker 1: not just birds perceived as a threat because certainly there
Speaker 1: are people that are afraid of birds or a little
Speaker 1: weeked out by birds when they're close to them. Certainly
Speaker 1: Hitchcock's the Birds managed to strike a nerve with people.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the idea of a a bird being large
Speaker 1: enough to do not just like pester you, or to
Speaker 1: h or two certainly in a large number attack you,
Speaker 1: but like a single handedly take you out and consume you,
Speaker 1: to prey on you, to to hunt you as if
Speaker 1: you were its dinner. Yeah. Now I want to talk
Speaker 1: for a moment about a very important fossil in physical anthropology,
Speaker 1: which is a fossil skull that is between two and
Speaker 1: three million years old. I think last time I saw
Speaker 1: the dating it was like two point eight million years old.
Speaker 1: They thought it was unearthed from a quarry in South
Speaker 1: Africa in nineteen four in a place called Tongue And
Speaker 1: it is the skull of a young hominid now known
Speaker 1: to be from the extinct human relative Australian Epithecus africanus.
Speaker 1: And note that this is a different species from australia
Speaker 1: Epithecus afarensis, which is the species to which the famous
Speaker 1: lucy skeleton belonged. Uh So this Africanus skull is known
Speaker 1: as the Tongue Child. And evidence indicates that this hominid
Speaker 1: died when it was about three years old. And we
Speaker 1: actually have a lot of evidence now indicating exactly what
Speaker 1: happened when it died, how its death came about. Just warning,
Speaker 1: this is a kind of sad and grizzly story, but
Speaker 1: also biologically fascinating. So the Tongue Child skull has puncture
Speaker 1: marks in the bone at the bottom of the eye sockets.
Speaker 1: And these puncture marks are similar to the marks made
Speaker 1: on other mammals like monkeys when eagles attack them. Today.
Speaker 1: Also the skull was found in a soil bed, along
Speaker 1: with eggshell fragments, as well as the bones of many
Speaker 1: other small animals, including rodent lizards, juvenile antelopes, and baboons,
Speaker 1: and a lot of these other bones also show damage
Speaker 1: that looks like it could have been caused by the
Speaker 1: beaks and talents of a large eagle. The South African
Speaker 1: paleontologist Lee Burger has argued that it was an eagle
Speaker 1: that killed this child. He argued for the eagle predation hypothesis,
Speaker 1: for example, in in a short communication I was reading
Speaker 1: to the journal the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in
Speaker 1: two thousands six, writing that quote re examination of the
Speaker 1: tongue juvenile hominin specimen the type specimen of Australia Epithecus
Speaker 1: africanus reveals previously undescribed damage to the orbital floors that
Speaker 1: is nearly identical to that scene in the crania of
Speaker 1: monkeys preyed upon by crowned hawk eagles, and Burger argued
Speaker 1: that this evidence, along with the strange collection of other
Speaker 1: animal bones at the side of the tongue child's discovery quote,
Speaker 1: strongly supports the hypothesis that a bird of prey was
Speaker 1: an accumulating agent at tongue, and that the tongue child
Speaker 1: itself was a victim of a bird of prey. I
Speaker 1: think this is an example of how scientific writing so
Speaker 1: often has a way of stating things that is like
Speaker 1: facially abstract, bordering on euphemistic, but so much so that
Speaker 1: it actually sounds more horrifying. So this bird of prey
Speaker 1: millions of years ago was not a bone collector, but
Speaker 1: an accumulating agent. Well, that makes it look that sounds
Speaker 1: like it was working for some dark other force. Right. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: if this hypothesis about the town child is correct, uh,
Speaker 1: and from what I read, I think it probably is. Uh.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure exactly what kind of bird
Speaker 1: killed the child, but the paper I was just quoting
Speaker 1: from draws attention to the similarities between the marks on
Speaker 1: the fossil skull and the wounds left by a modern
Speaker 1: bird of prey. It still exists today, called the crowned
Speaker 1: hawk eagle or stefan Ouida's coronatus, also just own as
Speaker 1: the crowned eagle. This is a truly frightening and magnificent bird.
Speaker 1: So it lives throughout central, southern and eastern Africa, mostly
Speaker 1: inhabiting like mountains and forests. Rainforest places with tall trees
Speaker 1: also sometimes found in the savannahs. These eagles can weigh
Speaker 1: up to ten pounds or about five kilograms, with a
Speaker 1: wingspan of up to six feet or about a hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty centimeters. They're large, they're not the largest eagle.
Speaker 1: The females are generally larger than the males, and the
Speaker 1: crowned eagle gets its name from a crest of feathers
Speaker 1: on the head. Sometimes it's got feathers sticking straight up,
Speaker 1: but sometimes it looks just like a bulging of the
Speaker 1: feathers towards the back of the head and looks a
Speaker 1: little bit like Gary Oldman's weird vampire bun head from
Speaker 1: the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula. It does really yeah, d
Speaker 1: d you see what I'm saying? And plus the spirit
Speaker 1: of of the two are closely linked here. Yes, I
Speaker 1: imagine this eagle also loves the children of the night
Speaker 1: because life Dracula. This bird is an astonishingly strong hunter.
Speaker 1: They've been known to kill prey more than four times
Speaker 1: their size. And I think this is this is key too,
Speaker 1: because certainly, even in an urban environment like in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: we see vultures and hawks fairly common. Hawks especially, you
Speaker 1: see them around a lot because there's a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of creatures for them to prey on. We
Speaker 1: went into the the urban advantages of the hawk in
Speaker 1: our one of our previous episodes, Oh Yeah, we talked
Speaker 1: with Jason Warred about the about the peregrine falcon and
Speaker 1: it's urban hunting methods where it will sit up on
Speaker 1: top of a building and wait for its prey birds
Speaker 1: to fly underneath, and then it die of bombs them
Speaker 1: from above. But generally you think about a bird like
Speaker 1: this grabbing a bird of this nature, grabbing something like
Speaker 1: maybe a salmon, maybe it grabs a squirrel, maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it even gets a small dog, But you don't think
Speaker 1: about them grabbing something four times their size. Right now,
Speaker 1: if they grab something four times their size, they're not
Speaker 1: going to be able to carry it away, but they
Speaker 1: can totally kill this thing and either eat it where
Speaker 1: it falls or take it apart and take pieces with them.
Speaker 1: So when attacking large prey, the predatory strategy of the
Speaker 1: crowned eagle often involves it'll it'll involve swooping down from
Speaker 1: above and then using their meaty legs and fearsome hind
Speaker 1: talents to break the prey animals spine when they make contact. Uh.
Speaker 1: They hunt a diverse range of prey, including monkeys, antelopes,
Speaker 1: and other small mammals and lizards. Uh. And they've, like
Speaker 1: I was saying, two basically feasting strategies. Once they've got
Speaker 1: a prey animal dead, if it's small enough, they'll try
Speaker 1: to carry it with them up to a safe tree
Speaker 1: top to eat at their leisure. If the prey is
Speaker 1: too large to carry, they will either eat it where
Speaker 1: they have killed it, or sometimes they'll they'll they'll tear
Speaker 1: you know, chunks of it off. They'll tear off ahead
Speaker 1: or tear off an arm or something and take it
Speaker 1: away with them one piece at a time. Another interesting
Speaker 1: fact about them the crowned hawk eagle sometimes uh. Well,
Speaker 1: so they generally lay one or two eggs nest brood,
Speaker 1: and if there are two eggs, when the eggs hatch,
Speaker 1: the larger of the two chicks usually kills its sibling.
Speaker 1: The parents are known to guard their newborn chicks very ferociously.
Speaker 1: You know, they violently repel encroaching animals. And so you
Speaker 1: might have a question, well, would these powerful hunters that
Speaker 1: can kill animals much larger than themselves, would they be
Speaker 1: able to attack humans today? Uh? Possibly, but if so,
Speaker 1: it is rare. I don't want to, you know, get
Speaker 1: you in the idea that you should be afraid of
Speaker 1: or demonize these birds. But there are a few accounts
Speaker 1: of crowned eagles attacking children. The accounts are mostly older.
Speaker 1: It was kind of hard for me to tell how
Speaker 1: much stock we should put in them. But such a
Speaker 1: claim of crowned eagle attacks on humans does not at
Speaker 1: all seem to be unheard of, and they do regularly
Speaker 1: attack monkeys, which of course are shaped a lot like us,
Speaker 1: and small human children would be within the size range
Speaker 1: of their prey. Remember, they can attack prey more than
Speaker 1: four times their size, so they can attack animals that
Speaker 1: are maybe like forty five pounds, or again be in
Speaker 1: awe of their predatory strings. I don't mean to demonize
Speaker 1: these animals because I know their habitats are threatened now
Speaker 1: and their numbers are declining. And but in general, a
Speaker 1: smile child is likely to to flip certain switches in
Speaker 1: a in a sizeable predator that might normally not not
Speaker 1: switch on when they see a fully grown human. Oh well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you ever looked up those videos
Speaker 1: on the internet of small children against the glass and
Speaker 1: like lion enclosures at a zoo. Oh, I mean I've
Speaker 1: I've taken my son when he was smaller. I remember
Speaker 1: taking him to uh some sort of a zoo like
Speaker 1: uh place somewhere in Arizona. I think maybe it was
Speaker 1: Arizona even But but when we were there, it's like
Speaker 1: there was a one part. We're walking out. There were
Speaker 1: these cages and they had some large predatory cats, and
Speaker 1: you can just see them like there's a change in
Speaker 1: the way they are viewing their surroundings. There's a change
Speaker 1: in their body language. You can you can tell that
Speaker 1: they're you know, even if they're not actively hunting your child,
Speaker 1: they're reacting to it as if it is potential food. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean the same way that the human instinct is
Speaker 1: activated by a small child. You know, most adult humans
Speaker 1: would see a small child and want to say, is
Speaker 1: that child okay? You know you want to take care
Speaker 1: of them delicious. Yes, the looks very small, very weak,
Speaker 1: easy easy kill. Not to shame any of these predators,
Speaker 1: that's just that's just the coating, that's the basic way
Speaker 1: of the tooth and claw. They're right. So you've got
Speaker 1: these claims of modern eagle attacks on on human children.
Speaker 1: But if these claims are generally correct, even then it
Speaker 1: does appear to be a kind of unusual thing to happen,
Speaker 1: you know, something that just happens here. And there was
Speaker 1: there ever a predatory bird that would have had humans
Speaker 1: more firmly within its prey buffet, but you know, even larger,
Speaker 1: even more diverse in the kinds of prey it would
Speaker 1: seek out. And that brings us back to New Zealand
Speaker 1: and the age of the Moa, and the moe is
Speaker 1: primary enemy. It's it's primary predator, the has eagle. So
Speaker 1: the Maori people of New Zealand have had legends of
Speaker 1: gigantic birds. Apparently there are several different legends of gigantic
Speaker 1: birds that have been linked to somewhat too real bird species.
Speaker 1: The two different legendary bird monsters that I was reading
Speaker 1: about from the Maori where the ta Hokioi or the Puakai.
Speaker 1: But there may be other legends that sort of fit
Speaker 1: into this mix as well. Right, and uh, and in
Speaker 1: real quick I want to again, remind everybody that the
Speaker 1: Maori came to New Zealand less than a thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So we're talking um roughly CEU. We'll we'll get more
Speaker 1: into into the history of the Maori and they're they're
Speaker 1: coming to New Zealand and their eventual interaction with other
Speaker 1: human beings uh in our in our second episode. But
Speaker 1: just remind everybody about the time frame we're talking here.
Speaker 1: So this this giant bird monster of Maori legend. It's
Speaker 1: a huge bird with black and white feathers. It's got
Speaker 1: a red crest and yellow green coloring on the tips
Speaker 1: of its wings. It was believed in some legends to
Speaker 1: have raised the hawk to the heavens, and was known
Speaker 1: in other some legends as a man eater. It's not
Speaker 1: only a feature of Maori oral tradition, but it's it's
Speaker 1: terrifying frame appears in archaic rock carvings of the area,
Speaker 1: and many paleontologists now believe that the that this animal,
Speaker 1: the ta Hokioi or the Puakai, is not purely fictional
Speaker 1: mythical as a monster like the on Zoo. It may
Speaker 1: be the cultural memory of this real giant predatory bird
Speaker 1: of New Zealand known as the Host's eagle or Harpagrnus mori,
Speaker 1: which again would have been the predator that preyed on
Speaker 1: the moa because again less than a thousand years ago
Speaker 1: when the Maori arrived, when the archaic mawory arrived in
Speaker 1: New Zealand, they would have encountered uh the nine species
Speaker 1: of moa. They would have encountered hosts eagle in its
Speaker 1: predation of the moa. Like all this was the world,
Speaker 1: this unique environment was in full swing when they first arrived. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hosts eagle was a beast. I think if we saw
Speaker 1: it we would be in awe It could way up
Speaker 1: to fifteen kilograms, which is about thirty three pounds. The
Speaker 1: female might have had a wingspan of up to three
Speaker 1: meters or almost ten feet. Like other birds of prey,
Speaker 1: often the female was larger than the male. Remember that
Speaker 1: the most powerful predatory bird in the world today not
Speaker 1: the largest, but the most powerful hunter, the crowned eagle,
Speaker 1: weighs up to only about ten pounds or about five kilograms.
Speaker 1: It's like three times bigger, and with their size and
Speaker 1: hunting power, the Hosts eagle could and did regularly take
Speaker 1: down moa as prey, And to think about how amazing
Speaker 1: this is given the size of the moa. What were
Speaker 1: we saying about the size of the moa earlier? Oh,
Speaker 1: we talked about ten to twelve feet with their with
Speaker 1: their head stretched out. I mean even the even the
Speaker 1: bush moa was like four and a half feet tall,
Speaker 1: you know likens, Yeah, the little bushma. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: they were. They were really at a loss here. So
Speaker 1: a predatory encounter might have involved waiting at say a
Speaker 1: tree top near a water source, and then waiting for
Speaker 1: a moa to come out and take a drink, and
Speaker 1: the hosts eagle could then swoop down at the moa
Speaker 1: at eighty kilometers per hour about fifty miles per hour.
Speaker 1: And again, think of something that weighs forty pounds hitting
Speaker 1: you at about fifty miles per hour. Some forensic analysis
Speaker 1: of the bones of the hoste eagle, I know there
Speaker 1: was some analysis done through cat scans and things. Uh,
Speaker 1: this shows that the eagle's body was by design able
Speaker 1: to absorb shocks from high impact speed. Um So at
Speaker 1: the impact, the predator comes in, talents out and it
Speaker 1: has talents that could penetrate bone. So after killing the moa,
Speaker 1: or the other large prey bird. The eagle could usually
Speaker 1: take its time eating the kill in the spot because
Speaker 1: they were not large mammalian predators to worry about coming along.
Speaker 1: Because this is New Zealand, Yeah, yeah, I've I've also
Speaker 1: heard it. Heard it described that the talents of Hastie
Speaker 1: eagle were about the size of a tiger's clause that's
Speaker 1: how big they were. Yes, So I was reading an
Speaker 1: article in The Independent that interviewed Paul Scofield, curator of
Speaker 1: vertebrate zoology at the Canterbury Museum. This was in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine and Scofield is also the author of one
Speaker 1: of the papers that was doing the forensic analysis of
Speaker 1: the hosteagle skeleton. And also, by the way, the Canterbury
Speaker 1: Museum is the same place where Alan Curnow saw the
Speaker 1: most skeleton that he writes the poem about. But so
Speaker 1: Schofield says, quote, it was certainly capable of swooping down
Speaker 1: and taking a child. They had the ability to not
Speaker 1: only strike with their talents, but to close the talents
Speaker 1: and put them through quite solid objects such as a pelvis.
Speaker 1: It was designed as a killing machine, so think about
Speaker 1: so it comes in with the clause extended can hit
Speaker 1: you at high speed with amazing force and then latch
Speaker 1: on with the clause to cut through flesh. And this
Speaker 1: would of course leave you bleeding and all of that.
Speaker 1: And Schofield said, hass eagle wasn't just the equivalent of
Speaker 1: a giant predatory bird, it was the equivalent of a lion. Wow, yeah,
Speaker 1: a lion of the air. Again, it's just a it's
Speaker 1: like an order of magnitude beyond any kind of flying
Speaker 1: predatory bird that we we've become accustomed to in our
Speaker 1: world today. Yeah, I mean, I guess I think like
Speaker 1: a like a griffin, you know, like this, this is
Speaker 1: a flying it's like a flying big cat if a
Speaker 1: leopard could fly. So again, the Maori arrived, they encountered
Speaker 1: this world, and uh, you know, and we'll discuss the
Speaker 1: details of this later, but basically the moment would last
Speaker 1: scarcely more than a century after that they were they
Speaker 1: were rather swiftly eradicated by human beings, and therefore hass eagle,
Speaker 1: since it depended on the moment for food, it went
Speaker 1: away as well. But there would have been time there,
Speaker 1: so there was there was There was a period of
Speaker 1: time and Mallory history, for their for the archaic Mallory
Speaker 1: and for the the moa hunting Mallory. For for them
Speaker 1: to have their children picked off by this terrifying bird,
Speaker 1: this terrifying predator of the sky. It's hard to imagine,
Speaker 1: but I just did. We're terrifying predators of the land
Speaker 1: are bad enough when they can come from above. I
Speaker 1: don't know what that just seems like that would that
Speaker 1: would entail a whole reordering of the way you view,
Speaker 1: you know, danger and safety in the world, because you
Speaker 1: generally think the sky at least is safe. I don't
Speaker 1: need to look that way. All right, We're going to
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back and
Speaker 1: for more discussions of the mighty moa. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So one question that comes up. We're imagining this this
Speaker 1: clash between these enormous moa and this enormous eagle, clash
Speaker 1: of the giant birds, and so I was wondering, well,
Speaker 1: how does how would a giant moa defend itself? Like,
Speaker 1: what kind of fight could it put up? So we
Speaker 1: already mentioned if we look to extent to ratites, we
Speaker 1: looked to the Austrians, we looked to the castle Wary,
Speaker 1: we see excellent examples of just how ferocious a kick
Speaker 1: from one of these creatures would be. But then you
Speaker 1: start imagine. So if you're imagining, say, say an unarmed
Speaker 1: human coming up and trying to start start a fight
Speaker 1: with say an Austria's or castlewary or perhaps a moa,
Speaker 1: that's not a good idea. You can imagine how that's
Speaker 1: gonna go kick wise, um, you know, or or any
Speaker 1: type of land predator trying to mess with one of
Speaker 1: these these creatures. But if something is coming from above
Speaker 1: like it does seem, and I couldn't find a lot
Speaker 1: of sources on this about like what the MOA's defensive
Speaker 1: capabilities would have would have been. But if it, certainly,
Speaker 1: if it had trouble kicking that high, what could it
Speaker 1: do if something was attacking its back, you know, it
Speaker 1: could it could pack at it. It could use its
Speaker 1: beak certainly, Um maybe and this is just me guessing,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking maybe it could whip it with its neck
Speaker 1: a little bit. That is that is the strategy we
Speaker 1: see with giraffes. You know, there's there's footage of giraffes
Speaker 1: fighting each other with using their necks as these broad
Speaker 1: whips and certainly the cat. Certainly the MOA's neck was
Speaker 1: was long and tough, but I don't know if it
Speaker 1: could actually have used it effectively, certainly against host eagle,
Speaker 1: which again is this this lion of the sky attacking
Speaker 1: it with enormous talents and perhaps making pretty short work
Speaker 1: of it if it got the drop. Well, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you're coming out a large bird like the moa from below,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously that that's not the place you want
Speaker 1: to be. But what does it do on its back?
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like the perfect place to pray
Speaker 1: on it. You can make wounds on the back of
Speaker 1: a large bird like this. That is, it's exposed, and
Speaker 1: you know, if you could get the talents in there
Speaker 1: and get out, even if you don't break its back
Speaker 1: when you first hit. Uh, probably just like what bleeds
Speaker 1: to death, it's it's there and drowns in its own blood. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it seems like a case where the moa was
Speaker 1: just particularly vulnerable to hass Egel. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: it means hoss Eagle was particularly depended upon the moa
Speaker 1: like they were they were locked in this. In this
Speaker 1: you can say eternal struggle. I guess you want to
Speaker 1: get be dramatic about it, but really an eternal balance
Speaker 1: until until this new force, this new terror, came to
Speaker 1: unbalance that that equation. Yeah, well it's um I mean,
Speaker 1: it's weird to think about because, like when you see
Speaker 1: a predator chasing prey in nature, I think naturally most
Speaker 1: of our sympathies are with the prey animal, and that
Speaker 1: makes sense. Like you know, if you were to see
Speaker 1: one person trying to hurt another person, your sympathies are
Speaker 1: with the victim. But in in nature, you could think
Speaker 1: about it as a as a kind of balanced thing
Speaker 1: because the predator is also trying It's just trying to survive.
Speaker 1: It is fighting starvation every every day, in the same
Speaker 1: way that the prey animal is fighting the predator that's
Speaker 1: trying to kill it. Right, and again we already mentioned
Speaker 1: We'll get into some of the genetic data on this
Speaker 1: in the next episode, but the MoMA was highly successful
Speaker 1: and it was spread all over New Zealand, so you know,
Speaker 1: it was a situation where it could support a dominant
Speaker 1: predator like this. Their numbers were such that the predator
Speaker 1: was ultimately playing an important role in supporting a healthy
Speaker 1: moa population. Yeah, totally. I mean, one thing I've read
Speaker 1: is that the hostagel probably would have been very few
Speaker 1: in number, right, like most apex predators, right, you know,
Speaker 1: they tend to be their needs to be many fewer
Speaker 1: of them than there are of the prey animals or
Speaker 1: the or the ecosystem can't sustain itself. Now, it's it's
Speaker 1: easy to grasp why the extinction of the moa came
Speaker 1: hand in hand with the extinction of of the great
Speaker 1: hass eagle. But extinction impacts a wide variety of species.
Speaker 1: And when you have such an established creature as the
Speaker 1: nine moa species, you have a lot of organisms that
Speaker 1: have come to depend upon them. So you know, you're
Speaker 1: talking about bacteria, parasites, fist gavengers, predators, but also whatever
Speaker 1: plants and fungi have come to depend on their feeding
Speaker 1: habits to propagate. And so I ran across an interesting
Speaker 1: study that got into some of this. In two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: researchers from the University of Adelaide's Australian Center for Ancient
Speaker 1: DNA or a c a D published a study in
Speaker 1: the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Speaker 1: about the contents of dried dung from four varieties of
Speaker 1: giant moa. Thank god, we're getting into some copper lights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, can you can learn a lot from copper
Speaker 1: copper lights. You know, they're highly useful and uncovering the
Speaker 1: especially in this case, the genetic records of diet, pathogens,
Speaker 1: and even the behavior of the creatures in question. So
Speaker 1: the researchers here found that the moa consumed a wide
Speaker 1: variety of mushrooms and fungi, including species that are critical
Speaker 1: for New Zealand's beach for us, and they were they
Speaker 1: were very interested. The researchers were very interested in exploring
Speaker 1: the prior but unproven hypothesis that many New Zealand fungi
Speaker 1: with bright colored fruiting bodies are adapted for dispersal by
Speaker 1: native ground dwelling birds. Now this couldn't really be tested
Speaker 1: because all the moa are extinct, But but this gave
Speaker 1: them a chance to sort of to explore it a
Speaker 1: little bit, right. So, in general, they found confirmation regarding
Speaker 1: diet in a few moa species. So they found that
Speaker 1: the little bush moa, for instance, which would have resided
Speaker 1: in the rainforest fed mostly on fibrous forest vegetation. Upland
Speaker 1: moa and giant moa were widespread dietary generalist, with upland
Speaker 1: moa populating the higher altitudes, so they would have eaten,
Speaker 1: you know, a wider variety of things. But the mushroom
Speaker 1: contents of the moa dung uh certainly contained plant symbiotic
Speaker 1: fungi that the wide ranging moa would have spread as
Speaker 1: they ranged, grazed and pooped. According to lead author Alex Boast,
Speaker 1: then PhD student at Land Cara Research quote, worryingly introduced
Speaker 1: mammals which consume these mushrooms don't appear to produce fertile spores.
Speaker 1: So this critical ecosystem function of the giant birds has
Speaker 1: been lost, with serious implications for the long term health
Speaker 1: of New Zealand's beach for us, So what does that
Speaker 1: mean that, um, the mushrooms passing through the digestive system
Speaker 1: of the birds would have still been reproductively viable, but
Speaker 1: going through mammal digestive systems, they're not right. The mammals
Speaker 1: that have come in to fill that ecological niche that
Speaker 1: was left by the by the now extinct moa like
Speaker 1: there they'll eat the same mushrooms. Perhaps they'll even spread them,
Speaker 1: uh even you know, travel you know, to decent distances.
Speaker 1: But the spores they leave behind are not viable. They're
Speaker 1: not able to actually uh fulfill the role that the
Speaker 1: moa fulfilled in spreading those spores. And again, those the
Speaker 1: mushrooms uh have this crucial relationship with with the trees
Speaker 1: of the beach forest. So um, this is again I
Speaker 1: think it's just a it's a wonderful example of of
Speaker 1: the cascading effect of extinction. They also found evidence of
Speaker 1: parasites in those copper lights. They found a quote surprising
Speaker 1: diversity of parasites, many completely new to science. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: And these are these are largely parasites that would have
Speaker 1: been exclusive to the moa uh and or the moa
Speaker 1: species in question that just went extinct with their hosts.
Speaker 1: And these included, for instance, various types of nematodes. Uh.
Speaker 1: So you know again, you you can't take a species
Speaker 1: out of the out of the game without impacting numerous
Speaker 1: other species as well. And it's certainly going to be
Speaker 1: the case when you have such a firmly established and
Speaker 1: dominant species as the moa of New Zealand. I'm mourned
Speaker 1: for the Moa. Yeah, it's hard not to, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I do want to stress that that and
Speaker 1: we'll get more into the relationship between the Moa and
Speaker 1: the Maori people in our next episode. But it is
Speaker 1: crucial not to not to feel a special amount of
Speaker 1: shame over over the hour in this situation, because again,
Speaker 1: anytime human beings have come into contact with new ecosystems,
Speaker 1: they have brought extinction with them. We change everywhere we go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's that is just that is the nature of
Speaker 1: human beings. Um, you know, no, no matter where they go,
Speaker 1: no matter what the time period. We did a previous
Speaker 1: episode where we talked about Roman extinctions just brought on
Speaker 1: by the spread of Roman civilization. Um. And we previously
Speaker 1: mentioned the elephant bird of Madagascar, similar situation. Uh, it
Speaker 1: was was doing really well than humans came and that
Speaker 1: spelled its doom. Now, the story of that doom in
Speaker 1: the case of the Moa is something we're going to
Speaker 1: get more into in our next episode. Though. You know,
Speaker 1: I just thought of another thing from Madagascar. I believe
Speaker 1: I was just reading earlier today that a an extinct
Speaker 1: relative of the crowned eagle of Africa was the Madagascar
Speaker 1: crowned eagle. But it's gone because when humans came to Madagascar,
Speaker 1: they hunted its primary prey animal, the giant leam or,
Speaker 1: to extinction, and then it had no prey anymore. There
Speaker 1: you go, all right, So so we just keep doing it.
Speaker 1: We just keep doing it. And yes, some some amazing
Speaker 1: creatures have been lost along the way. But I tell
Speaker 1: you the moa. It I'm just really impressed with this animal.
Speaker 1: I think it is my It is my my new
Speaker 1: spirit animal for these trying times we live in UH.
Speaker 1: I will I will ease myself into the imagined arms
Speaker 1: of the moa. It has no arms, it has no wings,
Speaker 1: but there's something about its nature that I can I
Speaker 1: can cuddle up with and uh and find comfort in.
Speaker 1: You're gonna become the lower ax of the ratty. It's
Speaker 1: you're gonna go on a quest where you want people
Speaker 1: to stop using the ostrich as the example animal of
Speaker 1: like cowardice and ignorance. I'm gonna have to I need
Speaker 1: to get out of the house and go look at
Speaker 1: some rattites this uh this weekend. There is there's an
Speaker 1: email that loves fairly close to my house. Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: its name? Big Glue? Biglue the EMU. I don't think
Speaker 1: I may have to go feed Big Glue this weekend. Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't think gotta know about Big Lue. Oh well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about it when we go out the air.
Speaker 1: Find Big lu for yourself, all right. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: go and check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. They're a bunch of them. You can find
Speaker 1: them wherever you get your podcasts, and you can also
Speaker 1: find us by going to special blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That will shoot you over to the I Heart listing
Speaker 1: for this show. Wherever you get the show, just make
Speaker 1: sure you rate, review, and subscribe huge Thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
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