7 Birds That Have Wings But Can't Fly
Birds fly, right? Not all of them. Some species have wings yet never leave the ground, and for many of them that is not a handicap at all. They evolved to find food and protect themselves without flying. Here are seven birds that keep their wings firmly folded.
Flight costs a lot of energy, so birds that don't need it can afford to give it up.
Many flightless birds evolved on islands with few or no large predators. With no reason to escape into the air and enough food on the ground, flying became an expensive habit they could drop. Others simply grew big enough to defend themselves or outrun danger.
Scientists have studied the DNA of ratites, a group of mostly flightless, long-legged birds, and found that their ancestors could once fly. After the dinosaurs disappeared, these birds could find food on the ground, grew larger over time and eventually relied on running rather than flying to escape predators.
1. Ostrich
The largest living bird can be taller than the tallest humans and weigh well over 130 kilograms. It can run at around 70 km/h, so with legs like that there is little need to fly, and getting that much weight off the ground would be hard anyway. Ostriches mostly use their wings for balance and to display when courting a mate.
Some flightless birds turned their wings into tools for life in the water.
2. Penguin
None of the roughly 18 penguin species can fly. Their wings work as flippers instead, helping them swim fast, hunt fish and get away from predators.
3. Galápagos flightless cormorant
The heaviest of all cormorants is also the only one that cannot fly. It makes up for it with strong legs and the ability to dive for food in shallow waters. Found only on the Galápagos Islands, it is known for spreading its small wings to dry after swimming.
4. Steamer duck
They may look like ordinary ducks, but these large South American sea ducks are known to be aggressive, and three of the four steamer duck species cannot fly. They beat their wings against the water and paddle with their feet, churning across the surface much like an old paddle steamer. Their size and temper keep them safe despite being grounded.
Like the emu, the kiwi and the cassowary belong to the ratites.
5. Kiwi
Shy and active at night, the kiwi has still become an icon. It is New Zealand's national bird, and the small brown fuzzy fruit is named after it.
6. Cassowary
With black, hair-like feathers, a colorful neck and a helmet-like casque on its head, the cassowary is fascinating to look at but definitely not a bird to mess with. It lives in the rainforests of Australia and New Guinea and is among the heaviest birds in the world.
7. Inaccessible Island rail
The smallest flightless bird in the world is only about 13 to 15 centimeters long and lives in just one place on Earth: Inaccessible Island in the South Atlantic. As the name suggests, the uninhabited island, an extinct volcano, is very hard to reach, and with no predators there, its tiny resident never needed to fly.
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