There are a lot more flightless birds than I thought.

If you’d asked me before, I’d have said the flightless birds are emus, ostriches, rheas, cassowaries, kiwis, penguins and the kakapo.

There are, I now know, also:

Three species of woodhens from the South Pacific
The Gough moorhen (from Gough Island in the south Atlantic)
The Tasmanian native-hen
The Giant Coot (flightless as an adult)
Something called a weka (from NZ)
Some other fucking thing called a takahe (from NZ)
Two flightless grebes (from South America)
Two flightless species of teal (from the NZ region)
The flightless cormorant of Galapagos
Three flightless species of duck (steamer ducks of South America)
Twelve kinds of rail, mostly from the south and east Pacific
The red-eyed crake of the south Pacific
—-

It strikes me that the great bulk of flightless birds are from the southern hemisphere.

any correlation between that distribution and the lack of large predators do you think?

ChrispenEvan said:

any correlation between that distribution and the lack of large predators do you think?

(shrugs) There are large predators in Africa and South America but I see your point.

ChrispenEvan said:

any correlation between that distribution and the lack of large predators do you think?

True for NZ

Catalyst did a good doco on song birds, parrots and pigeons which all evolved in the Southern Hemisphere.
Could be it’s the same with most flightless birds but they just haven’t done the study yet.

monkey skipper said:

ChrispenEvan said:

any correlation between that distribution and the lack of large predators do you think?

True for NZ

And no snakes either…

Peak Warming Man said:

Catalyst did a good doco on song birds, parrots and pigeons which all evolved in the Southern Hemisphere.
Could be it’s the same with most flightless birds but they just haven’t done the study yet.

Song birds related to the non deciduous flowering trees and the lack of seriously cold winters.

Flightless birds, well maybe lack of predators is more significant.

There I was thinking that Puffins were flightless, but it turns out they can flap their arms really quickly and actually fly.

Just went to the website of a scientist named Peter Forster. It’s in bloody German.

Who speaks a Germanic language, FFS!

Donner and blitzen…sorry.

sibeen said:

Who speaks a Germanic language, FFS!

I do

sibeen said:

Just went to the website of a scientist named Peter Forster. It’s in bloody German.

Who speaks a Germanic language, FFS!

Apparently, Peter Forster. Probably should look for a translation link.

dv said:

There are a lot more flightless birds than I thought.

If you’d asked me before, I’d have said the flightless birds are emus, ostriches, rheas, cassowaries, kiwis, penguins and the kakapo.

There are, I now know, also:

Three species of woodhens from the South Pacific
The Gough moorhen (from Gough Island in the south Atlantic)
The Tasmanian native-hen
The Giant Coot (flightless as an adult)
Something called a weka (from NZ)
Some other fucking thing called a takahe (from NZ)
Two flightless grebes (from South America)
Two flightless species of teal (from the NZ region)
The flightless cormorant of Galapagos
Three flightless species of duck (steamer ducks of South America)
Twelve kinds of rail, mostly from the south and east Pacific
The red-eyed crake of the south Pacific
—-

> Some other fucking thing called a takahe (from NZ)

IIRC, that’s the closest relative of our purple swamp hen. Apart from being a bit heavier it looks just the same.

I’ll look up the others later, a couple seem familiar.

Great auk was flightless In the northern hemisphere, went extinct mid 19th century.

As a matter of semantic interest, the little grebe is called a dabchick, which is one of only two words in English with the trigraph abc.

btm said:

As a matter of semantic interest, the little grebe is called a dabchick, which is one of only two words in English with the trigraph abc.

Go on, what’s the fucking other?

Don’t make me ask twice.

sibeen said:

btm said:

As a matter of semantic interest, the little grebe is called a dabchick, which is one of only two words in English with the trigraph abc.

Go on, what’s the fucking other?

Don’t make me ask twice.

It’s a word you of all people should know, sibeen (although to be fair it’s fallen out of use lately.)

btm said:

sibeen said:

btm said:

As a matter of semantic interest, the little grebe is called a dabchick, which is one of only two words in English with the trigraph abc.

Go on, what’s the fucking other?

Don’t make me ask twice.

It’s a word you of all people should know, sibeen (although to be fair it’s fallen out of use lately.)

See, here you go making me ask a second time.

I won’t stand for this, you know.

And I forgot to name it: abcoulomb.

btm said:

And I forgot to name it: abcoulomb.

Never fucking heard of it.

If I’m terse at the moment it’s only because dv dissed my joke. The big bully.

• the trigraph abc

By that do you mean a word with 3 consecutive letters that are abc?

furious said:

• the trigraph abc

By that do you mean a word with 3 consecutive letters that are abc?

Yes.

sibeen said:

btm said:

And I forgot to name it: abcoulomb.

Never fucking heard of it.

If I’m terse at the moment it’s only because dv dissed my joke. The big bully.

OK, looked it up.

Use SI, dickheads!

• Yes

Like Babcock?

furious said:

• the trigraph abc

By that do you mean a word with 3 consecutive letters that are abc?

Good point, well made.

furious said:

• Yes

Like Babcock?

That’s a proper noun (surname). You could also argue that crabcatcher fits, but that’s two words, and should be written as two words, possibly hyphenated.

http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/abcee

• That’s a proper noun (surname).

It is also a word…

furious said:

• That’s a proper noun (surname).

It is also a word…

What does it mean?

furious said:

• That’s a proper noun (surname).

It is also a word…

True. OK, dabchick is one of a very few words with that digraph :P

The ratites evolved into separate lineages between 90 and 70 million years ago, and the tinamous and moas diverged about 45 million years ago, according to the study.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140513-flightless-birds-ostriches-moas-evolution-science/

This would mean flightless birds would be co-inhabiting with their close relatives the dinosaurs (no doubt with other small predatory dinos), but managed to survive the mass extinction event 66 million years ago. Mammals the main predator of flightless birds, did not evolve into large predatory animals until well after this event and never reached NZ, where flightless birds were highly diverse. So evolving with their predators and/or the lack of predators would seem to be the main reason for their existence.

Also, my very limited knowledge, gained in the last few moments suggests that “A trigraph is a single sound that is represented by three letters” and I’m not sure how to say abc as one sound…

furious said:

Also, my very limited knowledge, gained in the last few moments suggests that “A trigraph is a single sound that is represented by three letters” and I’m not sure how to say abc as one sound…

I’m using the cryptanalytical meaning of trigraph: three letters used together. There are tables of digraphs (groups of two letters) and trigraphs available for several different languages. You’ve quoted the linguistic meaning of trigraph.

Calayan rail : 19° N, Philippines.
Guam rail : Cincinnati zoo, that’s North.

That’s about all I can find of nonextinct species North of the equator.

mollwollfumble said:

Calayan rail : 19° N, Philippines.
Guam rail : Cincinnati zoo, that’s North.

That’s about all I can find of nonextinct species North of the equator.

That would about it for species whose range is entirely north of the equator.

There are a few others that have a range straddling the equator.

Africa
Ostrich

Galapagos
Galapagos penguin
Flightless cormorant

Sulawesi
Snoring rail

Halmahera
Invisible rail

dv said:

mollwollfumble said:

Calayan rail : 19° N, Philippines.
Guam rail : Cincinnati zoo, that’s North.

That’s about all I can find of nonextinct species North of the equator.

That would about it for species whose range is entirely north of the equator.

There are a few others that have a range straddling the equator.

Africa
Ostrich

Galapagos
Galapagos penguin
Flightless cormorant

Sulawesi
Snoring rail

Halmahera
Invisible rail

Although we’re not sure about that last one.

furious said:

• the trigraph abc

By that do you mean a word with 3 consecutive letters that are abc?

interspersed with lu

a bald coot has them there letters.

Could the recently rediscovered Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) be flightless?

mollwollfumble said:

Could the recently rediscovered Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) be flightless?

that and the ground parrot aren’t much intetested in flight.

roughbarked said:

mollwollfumble said:

Could the recently rediscovered Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) be flightless?

that and the ground parrot aren’t much intetested in flight.

interested.

roughbarked said:

mollwollfumble said:

Could the recently rediscovered Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) be flightless?

that and the ground parrot aren’t much interested in flight.

Thanks for that, Perhaps only coming out at night might make the night parrot even less interested. The ground parrot and flightless NZ kakapo look similar but aren’t closely related.

Re extinct flightless south, I hadn’t realised that the dodo had a close relative, the Rodrigues solitaire

“Rodrigues solitaires grew to the size of swans. Hugh Edwin Strickland and Alexander Gordon Melville suggested the common descent of the Rodrigues solitaire and the dodo in 1848. They dissected the only known dodo specimen with soft tissue, comparing it with the few Rodrigues solitaire remains then available. Strickland stated that, although not identical, these birds shared many distinguishing features in the leg bones otherwise only known in pigeons. Osteological and DNA analysis has since led to the dodo and solitaire now placed in their own subfamily, Raphinae, within the family Columbidae.”

mollwollfumble said:

Could the recently rediscovered Night Parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis) be flightless?

It can fly, in an emergency.

mollwollfumble said:

Re extinct flightless south, I hadn’t realised that the dodo had a close relative, the Rodrigues solitaire

“Rodrigues solitaires grew to the size of swans. Hugh Edwin Strickland and Alexander Gordon Melville suggested the common descent of the Rodrigues solitaire and the dodo in 1848. They dissected the only known dodo specimen with soft tissue, comparing it with the few Rodrigues solitaire remains then available. Strickland stated that, although not identical, these birds shared many distinguishing features in the leg bones otherwise only known in pigeons. Osteological and DNA analysis has since led to the dodo and solitaire now placed in their own subfamily, Raphinae, within the family Columbidae.”

Hunters on Rodrigues found the solitaire was the only game in town.