Joey’s Animal Facts!
Over the past few months we have have focused on the extremes of the whole animal kingdom. This month however we are going to look at one particular group: the birds!
In previous months you’ve seen the fastest birds and the smallest, but did you know that the largest and strongest living bird is the North African ostrich? Males can be up to 274cm tall and weigh 156kg, and when fully grown they have one of the most advanced immune systems of any animal. Ostriches also hold the record for biggest eyes of any land animal, the biggest egg, as well as having the longest stride and fastest sprint on land.
Here’s a whole flock of avian facts: The bird with the longest migration is the Arctic Tern which travel a distance of 22,400km. The highest flying bird in the world is the Bar-Headed Goose which has been seen flying as high as 10,175m. The bird with the longest wingspan (of 3.63m) is the Wandering Albatross, which is also the largest “tubenose” species. The bird with the fastest wing beat is the Horned Sungem, a hummingbird from South America who’s wings flap 90 times a second. The slowest flappers are the New World Vultures averaging one per second. The fastest swimming bird is the Gentoo Penguin found on the Antarctic Islands which can swim at 40km per hour and the bird with the longest lifespan is the Macaw, with a recorded age of 109 years old!
One final flying fact… did you know that, before mankind arrived, the only mammals in New Zealand were three species of bats. Over it’s 65 million year isolation from any other land mass, New Zealand became a land of birds. The ecological niches normally occupied by mammals as different as wolves, kangaroos and rodents, were filled instead by reptiles, insects, and of course birds.
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