Argentavis the Largest Bird that Ever Flew

when we think of giant flying creatures our minds usually go to the ancient flying reptiles but 7 million years ago in Argentina South America's animals would have lived under the shadow of their own giant flying creature a monster bird known as argent Abbess magnificus argent Abbess could have rivaled some of the largest pterosaurs like Pteranodons in size yet lived in a time when most animals would have taken on forms that would be familiar to us today and some of the other giant relatives in its family only went extinct as little as ten thousand years ago argent Abbess was massive and was probably the largest bird to have ever flown it weighed as much as a human and a large one will be able to look you in the eye if standing on the ground its wingspan would have been around 6 meters making it twice the size of even its largest Condor relatives however it would have shared the Condor trait of having relatively short wings for its body size so its wingspan was not as you would expect for a 70 kilo bird for instance one prehistoric bird known as paleo cornice may have slightly surpassed argent Avice in wing length stretching beyond 7 meters but had a much smaller and lighter body although its closest living relatives and new world vultures it was actually from a different and now extinct family known as territory the day that inhabited the Americas throughout the Maya scene up until the Late Pleistocene and although some members like Arjun Thomas lived in South America by enlarge the family is actually better known from North America Arjun Terrace is only known from fragmentary remains and most of what we know about this group of animals is actually from another territory called territories Mariani this is because it is one of the many victims of the La Brea Tar Pits and so it is known from almost a hundred individuals territor not like condors who were nearly always larger even territories although much smaller than Arjun Travis would have been slightly larger than both the Californian and the Andean Condor the largest living vultures although they were very similar to condors in body shape their long beaks and wide gapes are actually better compared with birds like Eagles and so they may have actively hunted a lot more than any living vultures and Arjun Thomas also had these terrible beaks with the gape so wide that it would have been capable of swallowing an animal the size of a rabbit hole it is fitting the argent Abbess was related to condors as they are among the largest flying bird today condors evolved to such large sizes because many of them have bitterly scare birds of prey and other predators off their catches to steal it for themselves and they have been observed scaring away animals as large as wolves in order to do this successfully they need to be very large also provided there are no limitations to their body size due to their lifestyle animals usually trend to getting larger because it makes it harder for them to fall victim to predation and the scavenging lifestyle of condors is less restrictive to large body sizes than other active hunting birds of prey as they don't need to be quite as agile or aerodynamic another reason that condors have less size restrictions is that they are masters of soaring once in the air they rarely flap their wings and allow updrafts produced when air is blown over hills and mountain ridges to lift them or let themselves be carried by rising warm columns of air this is the reason why voters tend to have short but fat wings as this adaptation is best for being caught in updrafts and is also why you see vultures circling as they are climbing up inside an air column using their excellent eyesight to spot carrion from a distance argent Eris would have been perfectly built for gliding between different updrafts as well due to its sheer size and that analysis of its flight muscles compared to bodyweight shows that it would have not been capable of sustained wing flapping it is puzzling how it was even able to fly but anatomical evidence that it flew is very strong it had hollow bones its wing bones were robust and very long and it has marks on his bone clearly showing it possessed flight feathers this is unlike anything that is seen in birds that have evolved towards flightlessness the prevailing theory is that like living condors that have spent most of his airborne life finding and travelling between different updrafts a study in 2007 found that despite being massive they would have only sunk one meter per second while gliding which is actually comparable to some living vultures like the black vulture and many updrafts would easily be powerful enough to lift them showing that they would not just be able to take to the skies where were probably quite elegant fliers as well however the would have only come once they were in the air has takeoff and landing seems like it would have been quite problematic for the 2007 study I'll use a take-off from flatland would have been very difficult because of their weight but also that their wings would flap down twice their height they probably would have needed to take off from a slope like a hand glider or jump from a cliff edge argent Avice was probably primarily a mountain bird where it would have been able to take off and land without incident and also used the updrafts of the hills and mountains to stay in the air for long periods of time and this lifestyle is very feasible as this is how the Andean Condor lives today and most argent happy specimens have been discovered in the foothills of the Andes but some specimens are known from the lowland grasslands of Argentina as well contradicting this theory but the grasslands in Argentina are incredibly windy so it may have been possible for Arjun Tabish just to open its wings and be carried into the air by a strong gush of wind as this is the way the albatross get into the air it is thought that argent a versus legs were strong in stouts which would have made them quite good at walking on the ground this may have been an adaptation to cope with not being able to take off with ease as they were restricted for where they could take flight from they may have needed to travel to more desirable perches or Hills before attempting a takeoff they may have preferred being in the mountains due to more frequent updrafts as these were big birds would have needed a lot of food and so would have occupied large territories if there was more food in the grasslands they would have had it there due to the difficulty in takeoff and landing these birds suffered it is likely that it was not as much of a predator as the other territories and its eating habits probably leaned more towards living vultures also because it was larger than even many land predators it would have been able to steal prey from many carnivores in South America at the time so why would it bother hunting if I had no need to most of the time y argent avarice went extinct is not understood but it was probably due to climate change all those small opportunistic scavengers tend to be among the most successful of all animals large scavengers are the opposite and can actually be very vulnerable to changes in the ecosystem for instance most of ULTRA species around the world at the moment are in decline and this is because of humans but also that they rely on there being a plentiful supply of animals to fuel their food source which are in declined at the moment although argent avarice went extinct about six million years ago it's smaller territory members lived on till much more recently in the Late Pleistocene and one of the survivors was known as a aloneness there was a giant bird as well with a five meter wingspan it probably lived in a similar way to argent abyss who would have fed on the North American megafauna like mammoths and Elks and it probably only went extinct during the megafauna extinction about 10,000 years ago meaning that this giant bird may have fed on the carcasses of animals that are still alive today thank you for watching if you enjoyed the video and would like to be notified of future content then consider subscribing a massive thank you goes to my patrons for supporting me especially green fors and Fuzzle worth if you would like to support me as well then you can go to patreon and make a pledge you

Channel: Moth Light Media

Views: 179,524

Rating: 4.9403377 out of 5

Keywords: The largest bird that ever flew, Largest bird, Giant bird, Giant wings, Giant Flying Creatures, Real creatures from ARK, ARK creatures, Ark animals, Real animals from ARK, Bird, South America, Prehistoric creatures, Giant prehistoric creatures, Big Bird, Largest Prehistoric creatures, Cenozoic, Evolution, Biology, 6MYA

Id: 0bXov-Z2_9U

Length: 7min 56sec (476 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Nodal-Novel]

Wasn't there a hypothesis that this was a terrestrial predator.

[u/ryderrogan1028]

I hate these guys in ark