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Weird creature alert!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A

Anonymous

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I'm not one to use exclamation marks but I think they are needed here. Whilst perusing my copy of FHM for informative articles I came across an article entitled monster. A full two page spread of a bird, no, not Jordan, shes nearer the back, but the Hoatzin or Opisthocomus hoazin. Ok, it is known to science but they dont really have any idea what it is. Its the animal that evolution decided wasnt worth anymore effort and hoped it would die out, but there it is. Have a look in FHM or hunt it down online. Bird, reptile, dinosaur or according to some experts monkey relative, take your pick, cos obviously it doesn't know either!
 
Vegetarian Bird

And it falls out of its nest when threatened.

And they say Natural Selection has no sense of humor.
 
Interesting. I actually knew of this bird's existence but I don't recall it in FT. That'll teach me to skim through my copy.

I find it strange how, as soon as animals are known to science, they become mundane and nobody's interested any more. Like the platypus - a mammal with the bill of a duck and webbed feet, that lays eggs. Or the seahorse, where the male gives birth to live young. Or the oarfish, the likely origin of most sea serpent reports, that most people don't even know exist.

Maybe this'll happen with Bigfoot or Nessie. A day of fame and then consigned to the dusty old animal encyclopedia.
 
I don't think it's been in FT, only in FHM.

Personally I don't see that it could be anything but a bird...
 
taras said:
I don't think it's been in FT, only in FHM.

Personally I don't see that it could be anything but a bird...
Click to expand...
Well, it's definitely a bird, but it reminds me more of a dinosaur, honestly. Look at the last picture, with it in mid-leap. Look at it's eyes and face. Reminds me more of Jurassic Park than Big Bird.
 
This is the bird whose chick has wing claws to enable it to climb back to it's nest?
 
The dinosaur resemblance is what struck me.

It looks like what early-protobirds (archeopteryx) are often projected to look like.

If the wing claws bit is true, imo, that's just one more point for it

Could be parallel evolution.

But when I saw the pics the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs became more real.
 
I remember reading about it in one of those 'Coo, isn't nature weird and wonderful' books over 20 years ago. Along with the mallee fowl (builds mounds of vegetation and use the heat from it composting to incubate the eggs, testing the temp. with their tongues and either adding more vegetation or removing it, to keep the temp. fairly constant) and some other oddities. The Megapodes (?) which communally dig 'nests' into volcanic sand, lay their eggs then bugger off!
 
Caroline said:
This is the bird whose chick has wing claws to enable it to climb back to it's nest?
Click to expand...

Quite a good pic of a climbing chick here:

hoazin.jpg


The wing claw appears to be fairly large
 
Ancient

It does resemble Archaeopteryx, which was smaller I believe.
 
There was a TV documentary about these a few years ago- I think it was one of the Anglia TV 'Survival' series.

I seem to remember the ones they showed were nesting in a swamp, and the young would jump out of the nest into the water when threatened, and hide under the water until the threat had gone. Then they would climb back up to the nest using their claws...
 
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