the.com/ratite
Birds that gave up on flight and never looked back, just sprinted.
means A ratite is a flightless bird with a flat, keel-less breastbone — ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries, and kiwis are the main members of the club.
from From Latin 'ratis,' meaning raft — because the breastbone of these birds is flat like a raft, lacking the deep keel that flighted birds have for anchoring their powerful flight muscles. A 19th-century naturalist's coinage, naming the bird by its bone rather than its behavior.
- flat sternum
- no keel, so no anchor for flight muscles
- members
- ostrich, emu, kiwi, rhea, cassowary
- kiwi exception
- tiny bird, absurdly huge egg, zero flight
- evolution twist
- flightlessness evolved separately, not from one ancestor