What is an example of a ratite?
Ratites are flightless, cursorial birds that lack a keel on the sternum and have no interlining structure of feathers. The ratites are ostrich, emu, rhea, cassowary and kiwi.
What are the characteristics of a ratite?
ratite, any bird whose sternum (breastbone) is smooth, or raftlike, because it lacks a keel to which flight muscles could be anchored. All species of ratites are thus unable to fly. They are a peculiar and puzzling group, with anatomic anomalies.
What was the first ratite?
Diogenornis
The earliest known ratite fossils date to the Paleocene epoch about 56 million years ago (e.g., Diogenornis, a possible early relative of the rhea). However, more primitive paleognaths are known from several million years earlier, and the classification and membership of the Ratitae itself is uncertain.
Is a chicken a ratite?
A ratite is a bird that does not have a keel (the breastbone of a bird). Ratites do not fly, so they do not need the strong breast muscles typical in birds that have a keel (such as chickens, turkeys, and ducks).
How many ratite species are there?
Twelve species of birds are grouped as ratites, not including the order Tinamiformes. These species include the ostrich, emu, rhea, cassowary, and kiwi.
Can ratite birds fly?
All living ratites are unable to fly. Freed from the constraints of having to take to the air, some ratites could grow big. The largest birds living today, the African ostrich and the Australian emu, are ratites.
Is a penguin a ratite?
Most living forms belong to the order Struthioniformes (a group that includes the ostrich, the rhea, the cassowary, the kiwi, and the emu); however, they are more commonly known as ratites. Also flightless, but unrelated to the ratites, are penguins (order Sphenisciformes).
Is a kiwi a ratite?
The elephant bird and kiwi belong to a group of birds called the ratites. These include the ostrich from Africa, the rhea from South America, the emu and cassowary from Australia, and the extinct moas of New Zealand. Kiwis aside, these species are all big and flightless.
What type of animal is a ratite?
A ratite ( / ˈrætaɪt /) is any of a diverse group of mostly flightless, large and long-legged birds of the infraclass Palaeognathae. Kiwi, the exception, are much smaller and shorter-legged, as well as being the only nocturnal extant ratites. The systematics of and relationships within the paleognath clade have been in flux.
What is the origin of ratite evolution?
The longstanding story of ratite evolution was that they share a common flightless ancestor that lived in Gondwana, whose descendants were isolated from each other by continental drift, which carried them to their present locations.
What is the difference between ratite and Kiwi?
A ratite is any of a diverse group of flightless and mostly large and long-legged birds of the infraclass Palaeognathae. Kiwis, however, are relatively much smaller and shorter-legged, as well as being the only nocturnal ratites. The systematics of and relationships within the paleognath clade have been in flux.
Why do ratites look so distinctive?
So, here we have an explanation as to why the members of the different ratite lineages look so distinct as goes their wings and hips and so on: they evolved their big, flightless forms independently from smaller, flight-capable ancestors.