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No one suspected it, but after a brain reconstruction study, scientists found the largest bird known to science was possibly blind and roamed Madagascar at night.
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A rendering of elephant birds, which were believed to have roamed in what is now Madagascar.(Photo: John Maisano for the University of Texas at Austin Jackson School of Geosciences)
The largest birds ever known to scientists preferred roaming at night and were possibly blind, according to a study from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin.
The elephant bird was a 10-foot-tall flightless bird that went extinct 500 to 1,000 years ago. It lived on the island of Madagascar. Researchers at UT-Austin wanted to learn more about the odd creature, so they used CT-imaging data to create brain reconstructions called endocasts.
Their findings were published online Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journalProceedings of the Royal Society B.
The scientists looked specifically at two elephant bird skulls. In both of them, researchers found that the part of the brain responsible for eyesight was very small, suggesting they were nocturnal and possibly blind.
“Something that’s unique to birds and mammals is the skull is wrapped tightly around the brain, which means you can take the skull and fill up the space where the brain would have gone,” said Christopher Torres, a doctoral candidate with the University of Texas at Austin and lead author, told USA TODAY.
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“It was so unexpected that when we first glanced at this reconstruction, we didn’t initially realize that they weren’t there,” said Torres.
Torres said elephant birds belong in the group Palaeognathae, generally classified as large, flightless birds.
Previous research assumed big, flightless birds like ostriches were closely related to each other, Torres said. The study showed the elephant bird had more in common with another animal in the Palaeognathae group: the kiwi, a smaller, nocturnal bird living in New Zealand.
“Within that group, it wasn’t quite clear what went with what, but no one expected elephant birds and kiwis were each other’s closest relatives,” said Torres.
Now knowing these birds may have been nocturnal and possibly blind, researchers have better insight into how these animals lived, Torres said. “There was a moment where we just realized we need to rethink everything that we’ve been taking for granted about how we reconstruct their biology.”
Follow Brett Molina on Twitter: @brettmolina23
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