WEBVTT - Rise of the Moa 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to stuct to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.120 Heart Radio. Hey are you welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.239 Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:20.320 And to uh introduce today's episode, I thought maybe we 0:00:20.360 --> 0:00:23.160 should begin by reading a poem. Robert or you game, 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.040 I'm game for a little little poetry. In fact, it's 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:30.600 not just poetry, it's moetry. I did not make that 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:32.879 joke in my head yet, but maybe because I'm not 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.599 as perverse as you. This is by the New Zealand 0:00:35.600 --> 0:00:40.120 poet Alan kernw This was originally published in nineteen and 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:44.440 it's called The Skeleton of the Great Moa in Canterbury Museum, 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:48.800 christ Church. The Skeleton of the Moa, on iron crutches, 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:53.440 broods over no great waste. Deprivate swamp was where this 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:57.400 tree grew feathers. Once that hatches, it's dusty clutch and 0:00:57.440 --> 0:01:01.360 guards them from the damp. Interesting failure to adapt on 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:05.080 islands taller but not more fallen than I, who come 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:09.440 bone to his bone. Peculiarly New Zealand's the eyes of 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.960 children flicker around this tomb under the skylights. Wonder at 0:01:13.959 --> 0:01:17.760 the huge egg found in a thousand pieces piece together, 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.720 but with less patients than the bones that dug in 0:01:21.800 --> 0:01:25.759 time deep shelter against the ocean weather. Not I some 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.160 child born in a marvelous year will learn the trick 0:01:29.240 --> 0:01:32.720 of standing upright here. You can find that poem, by 0:01:32.720 --> 0:01:36.080 the way, in the nineteen seventy nine anthology and Anthology 0:01:36.080 --> 0:01:39.280 of twentieth century New Zealand Poetry. And Yeah, I really 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:42.600 love the cadence of that poem, and also I feel 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:47.039 like it effectively captures the weird beauty of these reassembled 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.320 skeleton remains one sees of the mighty moa. You know, 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.040 we just did Marianne Moore in the paper Nautilus. This 0:01:53.120 --> 0:01:55.160 is another poem like that. I love a good poem 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:59.840 that genuinely ponders biology like this deals with the evolutionary 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.120 reputation of the moa, the flightless birds of New Zealand, 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:06.000 uh and and the idea of learning the trick of 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:09.760 standing upright. Yeah. Now, this is gonna be a fun 0:02:09.840 --> 0:02:13.160 couple of episodes. I'm really excited about these episodes. I 0:02:13.160 --> 0:02:15.880 think the moa is one of the things that's really 0:02:15.960 --> 0:02:19.280 keeping me going right now. You're getting to research read 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.320 about the moa and envision the moa. Uh No, no 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:24.600 matter what where I don't know where you are out there, 0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:26.000 if you're listening to this, where you are in your 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:29.920 previous understanding of of the moa and other flightless birds. 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:32.760 But this is a this is a wonderful and weird 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:36.280 story that has as a number of number of connections 0:02:36.280 --> 0:02:39.160 to things we've talked about in the past, but but 0:02:39.240 --> 0:02:41.800 also some new angles. We're gonna be talking about evolution, 0:02:41.840 --> 0:02:46.280 We're gonna be talking about first contact between man and beast. 0:02:46.720 --> 0:02:49.200 It's a it's gonna be a fun ride. And there's 0:02:49.200 --> 0:02:51.040 no better place to start a fun ride than in 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:54.359 New Zealand, the land of avian decadence, that's right, And 0:02:54.360 --> 0:02:58.200 and the place where the mammal is truly debased. That's 0:02:58.280 --> 0:03:01.640 right because you I knowbviously, the rise of mammals is 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:05.600 one of evolutions most celebrated victory stories, right because in 0:03:05.919 --> 0:03:08.680 part because we are, of course mammals ourselves, and there's 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:11.720 perhaps a sense of of the gods and the primordial 0:03:11.800 --> 0:03:14.440 titans when we consider the age of the dinosaurs that 0:03:14.520 --> 0:03:17.520 came before us in our own mammalian age that we 0:03:17.600 --> 0:03:20.720 have you know, ascended uh in now, well, yeah, I mean, 0:03:21.040 --> 0:03:23.120 there's very much a case of when you look at 0:03:23.120 --> 0:03:26.320 the Cretaceous paleogy and extinction event that caused the demise 0:03:26.320 --> 0:03:29.240 of the non avian dinosaurs. Uh, it's quite clear that 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.480 their loss was our gain, yes, but it was wasn't 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:35.480 only our gain. It was also the gain of of birds. 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:38.920 And we often neglect the just the exceptional dominance of 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:41.920 birds for theirs is the the the legacy of the 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:44.960 of the dinosaur, and then they remain highly successful and 0:03:45.000 --> 0:03:47.520 widespread to this day. They remain masters of the air, 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:51.040 frequent masters of the water, and sometimes masters of the 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.240 land as well. Now, why would birds be the masters 0:03:54.280 --> 0:03:56.720 of the land, Like they've got the air that seems 0:03:56.760 --> 0:03:59.240 so much better than the land, why even bother with 0:03:59.320 --> 0:04:02.119 the land? Well, of course that the obvious answer there 0:04:02.320 --> 0:04:04.560 is that is that to be a master of the 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.480 of the air requires a great deal of energy, and 0:04:07.600 --> 0:04:10.640 if you don't have to fly around, you quickly find 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:15.320 reasons not to Evolutionarily speaking, of course, Well, so if 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.560 we're talking about mammals and avian dinosaurs or birds, why 0:04:19.640 --> 0:04:22.359 exactly was it that the loss of the dinosaurs was 0:04:22.480 --> 0:04:25.279 the gain of these other clades? Well, because suddenly you 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:28.640 have all of these uh, these niches in the in 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:31.960 the in the in the in the environment that open up. Uh. 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:35.799 That's suddenly a bird can can occupy, or various creatures 0:04:35.800 --> 0:04:38.919 have the ability to occupy mammals included. But this is 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.480 where we see the emergence of a number of these 0:04:41.480 --> 0:04:43.880 different flightless birds. This is where we see the emergence 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.320 of the terror birds and the demon ducks. Uh. And 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.040 we'll get into some more examples of flightless birds as 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.200 we go. Uh. But yeah, to be sure, we still 0:04:53.200 --> 0:04:56.359 have some amazing flightless land birds with us today, and 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.719 some of them are are quite enormous. The largest, of course, 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.680 is the ostrich. There are two species remaining. There was 0:05:03.680 --> 0:05:06.520 a third, the Asian ostrich, that went extinct roughly six 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:09.240 thousand years ago. Yeah. The two extant species are the 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:11.919 common ostrich and the Somali ostrich, and they're both native 0:05:11.960 --> 0:05:14.200 to Africa. Yeah. And I sometimes I feel like we 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:19.240 sometimes overlook how cool ostriches are. I find that it's zoos. 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:22.240 They you know, the one thing, it's a zoo habitat, 0:05:22.360 --> 0:05:24.839 and and you know it's it's you're seeing an ostrich 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:27.599 in a fenced in area. But then sometimes the Ostrich 0:05:27.640 --> 0:05:30.480 is in there with a giraffe, which seems particularly unfair 0:05:30.520 --> 0:05:33.839 because the giraffe, of course, is the is the tallest 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:38.400 um extant mammal that we have. And it feels kind 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.599 of like a dirty trick to showcase the world's to 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:43.719 the world's tallest extant bird with the tallest mammal which 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:45.839 towers over it. Right, It's like I'm trying to show 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:47.880 off my muscles, but then you put me next to 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:51.279 a gorilla. But but we have some other wonderful examples 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:55.760 of flightless birds, uh elsewhere. For instance, we have EMUs, 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:58.760 which are very fascinating. You get a chance to just 0:05:58.880 --> 0:06:02.120 look at an emu, just watching emu as it goes 0:06:02.160 --> 0:06:06.360 about its business. It's it's remarkable. The cassowary is one 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:09.120 of my favorites mine too. There's a cassowary here at 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.599 the Atlanta Zoo, Cecil Cecil the cast wary, who we 0:06:12.600 --> 0:06:15.200 we've talked on the show before with with a friend 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:18.840 Jason Ward here in town about Cecil the cassowary, who 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:22.440 remember Jason telling us that it's dung is very like 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:24.960 fragrant and kind of smells of fruit, even though it 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:27.520 is the I mean not to demonize animals, but when 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:30.320 you get up close to it, it is a horrifying beast. 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:33.520 Like it's beautiful. Its colors are beautiful. It has the 0:06:33.560 --> 0:06:36.279 blue and the red and the black feathers. It's a 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:39.040 gorgeous animal. But also if you look at its foot, 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:44.320 it's foot looks like a puppet from a monster movie. 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.360 You know it is. It is just a killing thing. 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:52.120 It's got these claws and this scaly, scabby skin. Uh 0:06:52.200 --> 0:06:55.080 that's a tongue twister. But yeah, look at a cassowary 0:06:55.200 --> 0:06:58.000 up close sometime if you just want to be terrified 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:01.920 and audit nature. And yeah, they they can. They can 0:07:02.040 --> 0:07:06.120 prove quite deadly if you know, the human comes into 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:09.279 close contact with them and there they begin engaging in 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:12.640 the defensive behavior. Yeah, don't try to look at their 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:15.239 feet up close if there is not a like barrier 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:17.920 between you. Yeah. Of course, we have other flightless birds 0:07:17.920 --> 0:07:19.800 who consider one of the more amazing ones. Of course, 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:23.680 it's the key we of New Zealand um the nocturnal 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:28.040 ground bird. All of these birds are what we call rattites, 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:32.360 a diverse group of flightless birds that were widespread across 0:07:32.400 --> 0:07:36.280 the scattered fragments of the supercontinent don Dwana UH and 0:07:36.400 --> 0:07:40.960 the and their dominance is waned over time, certainly with 0:07:41.000 --> 0:07:43.440 the rise of Homo sapiens. We still have all these 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.960 various examples that still remain today. Yeah, and you find 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:49.480 you find large flightless birds, well actually large and small 0:07:49.480 --> 0:07:53.760 flightless birds everywhere from New Zealand to South America. Yeah, 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:56.240 you know, and that's without even getting into the the 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.640 the obvious example of just other flightless birds. There's also 0:07:58.640 --> 0:08:03.480 the penguin, of course. But well, this raises the question 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:05.640 why do we have flightless birds all over the place 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.960 like this? Well? Uh. In the nineteen nineties there was 0:08:09.000 --> 0:08:14.040 a wonderfully titled theory MOA's arc which would assume that 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.520 all of these ratites descended from a common ancestor. So, 0:08:17.560 --> 0:08:19.800 in other words, that the idea here is that a 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:24.200 a flighted ancestor became flightless on god Dwana, and then 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:28.880 as the supercontinent split, this one flightless ancestor UH diverged 0:08:28.960 --> 0:08:32.160 into all these different flightless species. Okay, so you get 0:08:32.280 --> 0:08:36.120 one instance of these birds descending from an ancestor and 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:38.920 becoming flightless, and then the flightless one goes all over 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:43.040 the place, and then there's continental drift, the supercontinent splits up, 0:08:43.080 --> 0:08:47.320 and the flightless descendants of that one ancestor all go 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:49.920 off into different places and evolve in different directions, and 0:08:49.920 --> 0:08:53.160 they become everything from the Ostrich to the key We 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:58.160 to the moa. Right. But one of the issues with this, UH, 0:08:58.280 --> 0:09:02.480 this idea is that this would mean we'd expect something 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:04.679 we'd expect, say in New Zealand, we'd expect the moa 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:07.559 and the kiwi to be closely related to each other. 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.760 We'd expect that any any of these ratites that live 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.559 close together would also be closely related, but subsequent DNA 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.320 studies have revealed that this was not the case. Instead 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:20.840 of MOA's ark, the model seems to be one of 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:24.960 numerous cases of flighted to flightless evolution around the world. 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:29.720 So again, convergent evolution. UH. This repeated instance of a 0:09:29.880 --> 0:09:34.200 flighted bird evolving into a bird that doesn't fly, which 0:09:34.240 --> 0:09:37.360 seems so strange of a of a choice for evolution 0:09:37.400 --> 0:09:39.439 to make. I mean not to personify it too much, 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.760 but but what is the advantage there? I think we 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:45.440 alluded to this earlier. One of the main theories about 0:09:45.440 --> 0:09:48.680 this is that it's an energy advantage. If a bird 0:09:48.880 --> 0:09:52.480 doesn't need to fly, then it doesn't need to make 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.680 huge pectoral muscles capable flapping wings that can get it 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:58.719 into the air. And if it doesn't need to make 0:09:58.800 --> 0:10:01.959 those big muscles, it spend that energy on something else, 0:10:02.080 --> 0:10:05.679 or it can just survive on less food. Yeah, and uh, 0:10:05.840 --> 0:10:07.719 and it can have just like a smaller it can 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:09.920 have less of a basal metabolic rate. And we we've 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:12.160 talked on the show pretty recently about birds having a 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:16.840 pretty high BMR. So so yeah, this is basically the 0:10:16.840 --> 0:10:19.000 reason why we see the rise of these various flightless 0:10:19.040 --> 0:10:22.160 birds and in you know, all corners of the world 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.480 really But then of course a number of them end 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:27.400 up falling away. And of course we'll get into the 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:31.040 details of of of the fall of the moa in 0:10:31.080 --> 0:10:34.040 these episodes. Uh, in the case of the moa and 0:10:34.040 --> 0:10:36.640 in the case of the elephant bird, it's it's the 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:41.000 encountering human beings that did the trick. Yes, once again, 0:10:41.160 --> 0:10:44.000 human beings seem to be a sort of anomaly in 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:47.120 the fossil record in the evolutionary story. Once we enter 0:10:47.200 --> 0:10:51.600 the picture, things tend to go haywire. But another question is, 0:10:51.640 --> 0:10:53.160 coming back to what we were just talking about like 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:57.520 the energy considerations in losing flight. So it is clear 0:10:57.640 --> 0:10:59.800 that you can save a lot of energy by not 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.640 being a flying bird if you don't need to fly. 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:05.680 But in what case would a bird not need to fly? 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:10.160 Shouldn't flying always help a bird to survive? Well, basically 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:12.000 it comes down to, like like we said earlier, the 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:15.040 death of the dinosaurs creating these these holes for it, 0:11:15.080 --> 0:11:18.120 these niches for it in the environment. You need a 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.760 place where I mean to use a very simple even 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:25.480 tacki metaphor here for birds they need a place to land, uh, 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:27.720 in a place it's not already occupied by say a 0:11:27.800 --> 0:11:32.320 highly successful dinosaur or highly highly successful mammal. And so 0:11:32.720 --> 0:11:35.800 there there are corners of the world, uh, you know, 0:11:35.960 --> 0:11:39.520 other shards of Gondwana where the the the idea of 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:43.440 a kingdom of the birds remained at least partially unchallenged 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:47.160 by mammalian usurpers. Like nothing came nothing was already there 0:11:47.200 --> 0:11:50.439 to keep the bird from landing, and nothing came up 0:11:50.720 --> 0:11:54.880 to U to erase it from the ecosystem. Um. For instance, 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.360 there's the island of Madagascar, which enjoyed something like eighty 0:11:58.400 --> 0:12:01.920 eight million years of isolate Asian during which it fostered 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:05.040 various forms of lemur as well as the massive elephant 0:12:05.040 --> 0:12:09.440 bird uh not only a rattite but often considered the 0:12:09.520 --> 0:12:14.000 largest known rattite to ever walk the earth. But then 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:18.120 there's also far flung New Zealand, which enjoyed an amazing 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:21.440 degree of freedom as well from the mammalian revolution, well 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:26.760 until roughly umred c e with the arrival of human beings. 0:12:27.200 --> 0:12:29.920 Now that's not to say they were completely free of 0:12:29.960 --> 0:12:35.040 mammals that believe they're too extinct, primitive mammals known only 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:38.560 as the Saint Bathans mammal that are present in the 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.920 in the fossil record from the Miocene. Otherwise, the only 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:45.800 way for a mammal to get to New Zealand was 0:12:45.880 --> 0:12:49.679 to fly there or to swim there. So you'd have 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.360 this huge island that's got birds on it, but does 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:57.720 not have any large mammalian predators. It doesn't have any lions, 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:00.760 it doesn't have any wolves, it doesn't have any foxes, 0:13:00.800 --> 0:13:05.280 anything for a bird to need to fly and escape from. 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:08.000 So if you don't have a predator you have to 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:12.000 fly and escape from, why even keep making wings Exactly? 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:14.559 You just you land and you start filling those niches. 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:17.800 There's no buffalo there, no horses again, no wolves. And 0:13:17.840 --> 0:13:19.920 then the as far as the other mammals, the ones 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:22.520 that have swam there. I mean, we're talking about seals, 0:13:22.600 --> 0:13:25.760 sea lions, whales out in the waters around New Zealand. 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:29.840 And they they're they're they're not gonna invade the forest 0:13:29.880 --> 0:13:34.200 anytime soon. Uh, they're doing just fine. And then other 0:13:34.240 --> 0:13:37.360 than that, we have bats. Bats flew to New Zealand, 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.120 where we do see you do see an interest in 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:44.440 case where where the bats that come to New Zealand 0:13:44.480 --> 0:13:47.240 end up spending more time on the ground than you 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.000 see elsewhere in the world, particular the New Zealand lesser 0:13:51.080 --> 0:13:53.600 short tailed bat, which spends a lot of its time 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:58.800 foraging on the forest floor, crawling around, um, basically taking 0:13:58.840 --> 0:14:02.160 on a far more terrestrial a role than bat's employee elsewhere. Again, 0:14:02.200 --> 0:14:05.040 this would make sense as an evolutionary adaptation if there's 0:14:05.080 --> 0:14:07.160 just not a lot of stuff to worry about on 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:10.720 the ground like there is everywhere else. Yeah, Like we 0:14:10.760 --> 0:14:13.600 mentioned the kiwi earlier, Like the kiwi is an example 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:17.559 of a ground dwelling bird. Uh, you know, it goes 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:21.120 around at night, it eats things like worms, but there's nothing. 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:23.600 There's nothing like a mole. There there are no moles 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:26.720 to fill that niche in the environment. Uh, therefore the 0:14:26.800 --> 0:14:30.400 kiwi is is taking that role on even though it 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:32.840 is a bird. Now you do see some cases where 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:36.520 reptiles or gastropods are also you know, filling in these 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:38.960 these niches in the environment in New Zealand. But for 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:42.600 the most part, the birds are the real stars here. Um, 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:45.440 we mentioned the kiwi and there are there are numerous 0:14:45.480 --> 0:14:48.000 other examples of flightless birds in New Zealand. There's a 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.320 there are various extant species that we still find, such 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:53.760 as the South Island tacky heat and then there's also 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:57.040 a flightless bird known as the Weka. But the most 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:01.720 amazing examples are the nine now extinct species of moa, 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:06.760 including the giant moa that used to uh To to 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:10.280 exert their dominance over New Zealand. Well, maybe we should 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:11.640 take a break and then when we come back we 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:17.800 can talk about this giant bird. Thank alright, we're back. 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.080 So we just introduced the character of the moa. This, 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:23.320 I guess we alluded to a little bit earlier. But 0:15:23.680 --> 0:15:27.720 this giant flightless bird that used to inhabit New Zealand. 0:15:28.280 --> 0:15:30.800 That's right. Yeah, there were nine different nine different species 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:33.680 are known to exist. There's the upland moa, the little 0:15:33.720 --> 0:15:36.080 bush moa, and I have to stress the little bush 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:39.440 moa was still one point three meters or four point 0:15:39.480 --> 0:15:43.560 three ft tall, so it's still a sizeable bird. Wait 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.080 is it now? Is it the little bush moa or 0:15:46.120 --> 0:15:49.640 the little bush moa? Uh? The little bush moa sometimes 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.360 just referred to as the bush moa. I'm just trying 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.080 to think. I mean, is it like a bush moa 0:15:54.160 --> 0:15:56.360 that's little or is it being compared to a little 0:15:56.360 --> 0:15:58.560 bush or something? Oh? I think it basically lived in 0:15:58.560 --> 0:16:01.840 the bush bushma would have would have lived more in 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:05.720 the rainforest. So essentially the moa is so successful. You 0:16:05.720 --> 0:16:08.160 have all you have like nine different varieties and different 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.480 parts of New Zealand. Uh, different sizes. By the two 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:16.080 largest were dinormous Robustus which means robust, strange bird, and 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:21.160 dinornous novels Olndia. So we're largely gonna be talking about 0:16:21.160 --> 0:16:23.560 those two because they were the biggest. We're talking about 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:27.440 moa that reached the heights of three point six meters 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:31.480 or twelve feet tall. That's with the neck outstretched and 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:36.760 there with with estimated weights of two or five and 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:41.880 ten pounds. So these were these were sizeable critters. They 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:44.920 looked rather like an enormous emu. So if you've seen 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:46.800 an emu in in person, you have like a good 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:50.920 starting point for imagining them. Like a wide, kind of 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:56.720 shaggy feathery body on long uh you know, lethal looking 0:16:56.800 --> 0:17:00.320 legs with these great claws at the end, and a 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.440 long snaking neck you know, almost like a like a 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.159 like an like an elephant's trunk, at least a too 0:17:06.240 --> 0:17:09.199 comparatively small head, yes, and the skeletons. It's almost like 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:13.040 a comically small looking head compared to the gigantic nous 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.680 of its body. But so another one thing I would 0:17:16.720 --> 0:17:18.840 wonder about, of course, is okay, well we know it's 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.199 probably flightless, but what does it do with its wings? 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:23.400 Does have a little a little like t rex arm 0:17:23.480 --> 0:17:26.239 talons up there or what's happening with the wings? Well, 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:29.440 that's that's typically what you expect, right. Flightless birds typically 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:33.639 have at least vestigial wings, a little shrunken remnants of 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:37.920 their long neglected flying limbs. Uh. Sometimes, as with an ostrich, 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:39.960 there's still some sort of a use for these wings. 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:43.280 The ostrich uses it's it's so it's little wings there 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.199 to stabilize them when they run and to aid in 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:49.159 courtship displays, even though they're you know, they do not 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.280 produce flight at all. Right, Well, I mean you can see, uh, 0:17:52.440 --> 0:17:55.480 some birds that are thought to be flightless actually do 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:57.760 kind of glide near to the ground. Some I'm like 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:01.040 chickens can use their wings to kind of glide around 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:03.400 near the ground. Right. But but even failing that, like, 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.520 sometimes there's some purpose, even if it's a display, right, U. 0:18:06.640 --> 0:18:08.919 And even if there's not a purpose, you might expect 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:11.080 to find, as with other flight was birds, to find 0:18:11.280 --> 0:18:15.880 some vestigial remain of that limb, you know, like little 0:18:15.960 --> 0:18:20.600 bones or something. But the moa doesn't even have vestigial wings. 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.760 There are no little not like even like shrunken bones 0:18:24.359 --> 0:18:27.440 that are left over. There is no trace of their 0:18:27.480 --> 0:18:31.159 wings at all. They have simply been erased through their evolution. 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:35.200 That's creepy. It's yeah, it's amazing. It's it's it's one 0:18:35.240 --> 0:18:39.440 of the very few known creatures to possess only two limbs. 0:18:40.000 --> 0:18:42.200 The only other creatures that I could run across that 0:18:42.280 --> 0:18:45.320 were in a similar situation at all are the Mexican 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:49.840 moble lizard and the Serenada salamanders. Both of these are 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:53.600 cases where creature has lost its hind legs and retains 0:18:53.640 --> 0:18:57.080 it's its front limbs. But you won't find any mammals 0:18:57.080 --> 0:18:59.679 that are like this. Even the hind legs of the 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:04.040 great whales remain in this stigital form um. No, you 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:08.040 find no other birds, no dinosaurs, just these nine species 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.560 of giant land birds. Even the t rex w it's 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.840 you know, famously small, um you know, four limbs. So 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.280 we've we've discussed the various theories for why they kept 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:19.280 even those those tiny limbs on the show before. But 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:23.119 even the t rex still has little little arms. The 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:26.960 moa has no arms, no, no wings at all. It's 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.560 just such a strange creature. The other day I was 0:19:29.600 --> 0:19:35.399 imagining it as a kind of biological unicycle. Yeah, yeah, 0:19:35.520 --> 0:19:38.639 it's it's so weird. It's it's like some of the 0:19:38.680 --> 0:19:43.679 illustrations look oddly huggable, but it has no arms, it 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:46.960 has no wings, like there's nothing. I kept thinking like, 0:19:47.000 --> 0:19:49.600 why does this, why does this amaze me so? And 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:51.960 I think part of it is that when we think 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.439 about animals so I've noticed when when children think about animals, 0:19:55.440 --> 0:19:57.879 they often embody the animal, you know, they have to 0:19:57.960 --> 0:20:01.359 like act like the animal, uh, you know, pandomiment and 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.480 so forth, which is a fascinating tendency. By the way, 0:20:04.640 --> 0:20:06.920 why do they naturally do that? But I think even 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:09.520 if we're not like actually moving our bodies around, when 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:11.000 we look at animal, there's part of us that like 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:15.000 puts ourselves in its body, and we imagine our limbs 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:19.560 as its limbs. And this creature has has no uh, 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:23.520 nothing like arms at all. So if you're trying to 0:20:23.520 --> 0:20:25.320 get this in your head, just you know, stop, if 0:20:25.359 --> 0:20:27.680 you have a chance, look up some images of the moa, 0:20:28.119 --> 0:20:30.800 of its skeletal remains, and also reconstructions of what it 0:20:30.800 --> 0:20:33.879 would have looked like, and just focus on the fact 0:20:33.920 --> 0:20:38.360 that it has no vestigial wings. It's just so wonderfully weird. Now. 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:41.560 I know you said it it looks huggable, and I 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:44.360 sort of agree, but I do want to stress if 0:20:44.359 --> 0:20:47.680 they actually recreate these things and bring them back from extinction, 0:20:47.760 --> 0:20:50.480 do not try to hug them. No, that's a very 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:54.679 bad idea. Right. Yeah, we discussed how potentially lethal the 0:20:54.720 --> 0:20:56.560 castle areas and the same can be said of the 0:20:56.560 --> 0:20:59.520 ostrich So I think without a doubt the moa could 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:02.280 do some areous damage. You are still around to kick you. 0:21:02.440 --> 0:21:03.760 Oh and by the way, if you if you want 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:06.240 to look up some images of the moa or just 0:21:06.280 --> 0:21:09.640 get additional information about them, I highly recommend checking out 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:15.280 New Zealand Birds Online, created by ornithologists Colin ms Kelly. 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:17.919 It's a great Uh, it's it's great. It's one of 0:21:17.920 --> 0:21:20.679 the sources we use for these three episodes. Uh. And 0:21:20.720 --> 0:21:23.840 you'll find you find it an in z birds online 0:21:23.880 --> 0:21:25.920 dot org dot in z and if you go to 0:21:25.960 --> 0:21:27.880 the search bar and you type in moa, you'll get 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:32.240 pictures of all nine varieties illustrations of all nine varieties 0:21:32.280 --> 0:21:35.000 of moa. Now, one thing that's kind of interesting about 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:37.480 the moa is we often tend to think, okay, where 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:40.800 there are large land dwelling animals, they often tend to 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.560 be few in number. Right. But the but for a 0:21:44.600 --> 0:21:47.960 long time, New Zealand was kind of the land of 0:21:48.000 --> 0:21:51.040 the moa, right yeah, Yeah, The moa where New Zealand's 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:55.480 dominant land vertebrates and dominant herbivores. So they basically we 0:21:55.800 --> 0:22:00.400 went around consuming twigs, leaves, flowers, seeds, and berries from 0:22:00.440 --> 0:22:04.800 a wide variety of trees, shrubs, and vines. They also 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:08.720 ate um mushrooms, which we'll get into a little later. Uh. 0:22:08.760 --> 0:22:12.320 They were able to process a highly fibrous diet due 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:15.760 in part to large gizzard stones and a tough beak. 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:19.600 So I met those gizzard stones were involved in some 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:25.240