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Why Is the Kiwi's Egg So Big?
This small(ish) bird lays one of the largest eggs in the bird world. New research might hold the keys to solving this long-standing mystery.
There’s an order of roughly partridge-sized ground birds called tinamous, which includes species that range from Mexico down to the southern tip of the Americas, some of which lay astonishingly brightly colored eggs, and most of which can fly, if badly. Researchers had long thought the tinamous and the ratites to be sister groups, but in a 2010 paper published in Systematic Biology, mitochondrial DNA analysis found that the giant, extinct moa’s closest relative wasn’t the kiwi, emu, or even the ostrich—it was the unassuming little tinamou, workings wings and all. So, far from being the weighty baggage of an evolutionary journey from huge to humble, the kiwi’s egg, in all likelihood, must be an adaptation it picked up as it evolved from a smaller flying bird to the stumpy-legged, chickenish weirdo of today.
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