As if the elephant birdie was n’t unknown enough , a new sketch has evince that these 3 - meter - marvelous ( ~10 foot ) bird that once stamp around Madagascar were most belike nocturnal . Weirder still , they might have even been practically blind .
Using CT scans of skulls from two mintage of elephant bird , researcher at the University of Texas at Austin build up up a clear characterization of what the skirt ’s brain look like . It showed that the bird ’s optic lobe , a bundle of brain nerves that controls and processes eyesight , was tiny . Within some of the specimens , it even appeared to be virtually absent . In other specie , especially of shuttlecock , this is a unclouded clew that the animal does n’t use its sight much and therefore lived a nocturnal life-style .
" No one has ever suspect that elephant birds were nocturnal , " Christopher Torres , a PhD prospect who led the enquiry , allege in astatement . " The few studies that mull over on what their behaviour was like explicitly bear they were combat-ready during the day . "
" Humans lived aboard , and even hunted , elephant doll for thousands of years , " Torres say . " But we still know practically nothing about their lives . We do n’t even really have intercourse exactly when or why they went extinct . "
The new study can be find out in the journalProceedings of the Royal Society B.As the investigator note in the subject area , razz skulls enclose tightly around their brain , so it ’s somewhat easy to pick out the cast and structures of bird brain just from study their skull Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe .
weigh a whopping 650 kilograms ( 1,400 dog pound ) , elephant hoot were a family of flightless birds on the island of Madagascar that wentextinct between 500 and 1,000 years ago . Their closest living congener is the kiwi , the volaille - sized flightless iconic bird of New Zealand , which also just so hap to be practically unreasoning . They have effectively put back their sense of spate with a super sharp sense of smell and a keen spike .
This does n’t seem to be the case with elephant birds , however . The larger of the two specie of elephant shuttlecock had a large olfactory bulb , a bundle of nerve cell that process smell and odor . This suggest that it was most likely a forest habitant that needed to whiff around for food . However , the smaller elephant doll species had a little olfactory bulb and comparatively mediocre sense of smell but also had keener vision . The researchers intend that this could mean the smaller species was a grasslands - dweller that foraged at nightfall , rather than the dead of dark .
" Studying mastermind chassis is a really utilitarian way of connecting ecology – the relationship between the bird and the environment – and human body , " Torres added . " Discoveries like these give us enormous perceptivity into the lives of these flaky and poorly understood birds . "
