The biggest beast that ever flew had wings longer then a bus.
- By Ella Davies
9 May 2016
One modern-day giant weighs up to 330lb (150kg) and can stand 9ft (2.75m) tall with wings spanning almost 6.5ft (2m). But this is the ostrich , which famously does not fly.
Neither do any of the rest of the big birds in the ratite family, which includes the emu, rhea and cassowary. Similarly, the 3ft (1m) emperor penguin and marginally shorter king penguin both reach impressive weights but only "fly" underwater.
Arguably the heaviest flying bird is the kori bustard of southern Africa. Males can reach 42lb (19kg) with wingspans of up to 2.5ft (75cm), but these ground-dwelling birds rarely fly .
Concentrating on birds that are in their element on the wing, the Andean condor is often named as the largest flying bird. Among these mountain-dwelling South American vultures, males can tip the scales at up to 33lb (15kg) and have wings that can span 10ft 5in (3.2m).
Above the high seas, there is a bird who might only weigh around 19lb (8.5kg) but its wings routinely span more than 9ft 10in (3m). The wandering albatross holds the longest wingspan record for any flying bird, the maximum having been recorded at 11ft 10in (3.63m).
Of course, birds are not the only animals with impressive wings. Known variously as megabats, flying foxes or fruit bats, a number of tropical bats have also grown large.
"[ Acerodon jubatus ] is largest by weight, weighing in at just over a kilogram," says Tammy Mildenstein of the Southeast Asian Bat Conservation Research Unit, who has worked extensively with bats in Indonesia. "There are a couple of Pteropus species, Pteropus vampyrus and Pteropus giganteus , that are slightly larger by wingspan. All are very close in weight and have nearly 2m [6.5ft] wingspans."
While one of those Latin names suggests something more sinister, the bats actually maintain their size on a diet of fruit. Some also drink nectar and eat leaves. They forage in the forest canopy because their wings are too large for them to easily navigate between the trees.
"The advantage of having large kite-like wings is they can glide and fly very long distances," says Mildenstein. "This helps flying foxes travel the average 50km [30 miles] through forests each night to collect food."
Flight is useful for any animals that need to travel long distances for food or mates. But to find true giants we need to step back through time to an era before the continents had settled into their current positions.
" Pelagornis sandersi is the largest flying bird on record by wingspan," explains Michael Habib of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, an expert in ancient flying animals.
This "seagull on steroids" had wings that could measure 7.38m (24ft 2in) from tip to tip and is estimated to have weighed between 20 and 40kg (44-88lb).
In contrast, the heaviest known flying bird, Argentavis , was more than twice this weight but had a shorter wingspan. Remains in the La Brea Tar Pits of Los Angeles suggest it lived more recently, around 6 million years ago, according to Habib.
Jumping even further back in time, we leave the recognisable birds and meet the pterosaurs.
These reptiles evolved the power of flight before birds, and a few did so on a grand scale. Named after the Mesoamerican feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatlus northropi lived around 68 million years ago and flew on wings spanning 34ft (10.4m) .
Habib says there are a few related azhdarchid pterosaurs that tie for the title of biggest flying beast.
"Wingspan estimates are typically pretty reliable," he says. "Mass estimates are much less reliable except for the few species where we have complete, uncrushed skeletons."
In other words, they weighed as much as an upright piano and their wings were longer than a London bus.
Colin Palmer at the University of Bristol, UK , has worked with Habib to explore the mechanical limits of these giant pterosaurs. He estimates their maximum wingspan to be 36ft (11m), based on aerodynamic theory and the fossil record.
He says the fossil record for the largest species is patchy, but there is good evidence from scaling up the 23ft (7m) wingspans of related animals that fossilised more often.
"Calculations suggest the largest pterosaurs couldn't flap continuously," Palmer says. Instead, the estimated muscle mass of Quetzalcoatlus and its ilk suggests they had a similar flying style to modern condors.
"Large flyers typically can't sustain flapping for long periods," says Habib. "They are usually soaring animals, which means that they use powered flight part of the time and then unpowered flight the rest, using thermals, wind gradients, and other energy sources to stay aloft for long periods of time."
Taking off and landing also becomes an issue for really big animals.
Many modern birds use their legs to power their take-off and control their landing. You can see this at a bird table.
But once they are airborne, their legs are just extra weight to carry while the wings do the hard work. Species that fly long distances need lots of power in their chest muscles, and cannot afford excess baggage like big legs. Palmer says this explains the noisy, wing-beating take-offs and ungainly landings of swans.
In contrast, pterosaurs are thought to have used the same muscles for take-off and flying, pushing themselves off the ground with their forelimbs . They had air-filled bones, like modern birds, which kept their overall weight down.
The soft tissue wings of pterosaurs have rarely been preserved, but Palmer has used engineering knowledge to model the possibilities . Instead of feathers, pterosaur wings are thought to have been membranes, similar to bats'.
These wings stretched from one elongated digit to their ankle with reinforcing fibrous edges to help them fly efficiently. Palmer suggests these adaptations could be what allowed them to grow to such large sizes and become the dominant predators of their day.
"In a few million years another group of birds may reach giant proportions; there's no way to know," says Habib.
"Bats can also get much larger than they do, mechanically, but the current range of ecologies and life histories among bats doesn't select for large size. There could easily be albatross-sized bats, if it were just a matter of mechanics."
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160506-the-biggest-animals-that-ever-flew-are-long-extinct
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These reptiles evolved the power of flight before birds, and a few did so on a grand scale. Named after the Mesoamerican feathered serpent god, Quetzalcoatlus northropi lived around 68 million years ago and flew on wings spanning 34ft (10.4m) .
A 34ft wingspan! That is just plain amazing and frightening. And that larger flying animals may evolve again in the future? I suspect it won't happen while humans still inhabit the Earth.
Great article!
Damn it would be amazing to see one of those monsters!
As long as it was a safe distance away!
I wonder, would we "taste like chicken" to them?
These ancient critters did not fly . They were merely great jumpers !
White birds can't jump.
Glad I missed these giants! I can't imagine what it would do to your paint job on your car, either...
Aha! I's time to tell my shaggy dog story about the Foo Bird again, but I'll try to keep it short cause it's time for my afternoon nap - but this story will help me sleep.
In the deep Amazon jungle a group of bird photographers went looking for the very rare almost extinct Foo bird. They travelled for days on foot amid dangerous animals and reptiles. While sleeping one night a huge python slithered into a tent and swallowed one of the men whole. The next day, a bear chased the group up a tree, but one of the men fell out and was mauled to death. Then, while crossing the river, a huge crocodile dragged one of the men down and drowned and ate him. Then finally, the last remaining man heard the cry of the Foo Bird: "Fooo, fooo, fooo." It was directly above him and as he aimed his camera at him the bird let go a monstrous load of shit on the photographer's head. The photographer got his shot (and another one that covered his head completely). He got to the river and tried to wash it out without any success - the stuff was so sticky it was like glue. When the crocodile saw him it fled down river in terror. Then back on land the bear approached, saw him and ran away as fast as it could. Before reaching civilization again he stepped on the python's tail, but when the python turned and saw him it was so frightened it vomited up the remains of the one it swallowed and slithered away as quickly as a snake can slither. The photographer finally reached civilization and had the prize photo for a National Geographic photo contest.
What is the moral of the story?
If the Foo shits, wear it.
One of my favorite jokes!!! We still laugh about the Foo bird, at my house...
Great article, I would have to see a bird of that size.
Building bird houses takes on a whole new meaning though.
Went to the La Brea Tar Pits and saw the display of avians - awesome.
I lived in L.A. for more then 13 years and must have driven by the Tar Pits hundreds of times, yet I never seemed to manage to find the time to actually visit it. Then again I lived in Phoenix for 10 years and never made the trip to see the Grand Canyon. I have to get around to those things one of these days.
It seems to me like a giant bird would be particularly susceptible to scarcity of food. Their large wingspan would mean that they can only hunt in the open because they need room to glide without hitting something. A large wingspan would also mean that they can be seen from farther away, making a stealth attack harder. They would have to eat more than smaller birds so they need larger prey or they have to hunt more often. When nesting, they can't protect their young if they go too far from the nest. Living in flocks may aid protecting the young but it may also lead to the exhaustion of a food source. The disappearance of a particular kind of prey due to climate change or overhunting could be disastrous. Interesting article.
I wonder what they looked like.
Well the problem with that comparison is that one is a bird and the other is a reptile. Other then that is a certain resemblance.