Moa – The Biggest Land Bird ever been on Earth

Although the current biggest land bird is the ostrich, it wasn’t so until not so long ago. Indeed, just a few centuries ago, the Moa was still running the forests of New Zealand.

Composed of a few species, this family of bird may remind you of the ostrich or the emus, but did present very unique features for its own.

First, it is probably the only ratite (large and flightless bird) that doesn’t have any trace of what used to be their wings. Not even a little tiny curved bone… nothing. Just that could make it one of a kind.

But it is also a bird (yes… still considered as a bird) with the greatest “sexual dimorphism”, meaning that the male and the female have very different size. With 1.5 times the height and 2.5 times the weight, the females are so much bigger that it has long been considered that they were completely different species, until we recently discovered they were from a single gender.

And then, taken the specie Dinornis (or Giant Moa), is its height.

Ostrich are big bird. Being up to 2.8m tall, there is no question about it. But that is not even close of the 3.6m – and 250kg – of the Giant Moa! That was a completely different level, making the biggest flightless bird ever been on Earth.

Unfortunately, after being around for more than 40,000 years, they suddenly got extinct when a new predator came to New-Zealand: Human.

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