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elephant bird
Elephant birds are members of the extinct family Aepyornithidae. Elephant birds were large to enormous flightless birds that once lived on the island of Madagascar. They became extinct, probably in the 17th or 18th century, for reasons that are unclear, although human activity is the suspected cause. Elephant birds comprised the genera ''Mullerornis'' and ''Aepyornis''. ''Aepyornis'' was among the heaviest of birds (the extinct ''Dromornis stirtoni'' of Australia reached a similar weight). While they were in close geographical proximity to the ostrich, elephant birds' closest living relatives are kiwis,
== Description ==
The elephant birds, which were giant ratites native to Madagascar, have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions. In 1659, Flacourt wrote: "vouropatra – a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places may not take it, it seeks the most lonely places." Marco Polo also mentioned hearing stories of very large birds during his journey to the East during the late 13th century. These accounts are today believed to describe elephant birds.〔BBC Two Presents (2011)〕 ''Aepyornis'', believed to have been more than tall and weighing perhaps in the range of ,〔Davies, S. J. J. F. (2003)〕〔Alexander, R. M. (1998). ''All-time giants: the largest animals and their problems''. Palaeontology, 41(6), 1231-1245.〕〔Anderson, J. F., Rahn, H., & Prange, H. D. (1979). ''Scaling of supportive tissue mass''. Quarterly Review of Biology, 139-148.〕〔Alvarenga, H. M., & Höfling, E. (2003). ''Systematic revision of the Phorusrhacidae (Aves: Ralliformes)''. Papéis Avulsos de Zoologia (São Paulo), 43(4), 55-91.〕 was at the time the world's largest bird. Only the rather older species ''Dromornis stirtoni'' from Australia is known to rival it in size among the fossil record and is reported to have shared the same estimated upper weight, .〔Deeming, D. C., & Birchard, G. F. (2009). ''Why were extinct gigantic birds so small?''. Avian Biology Research, 1(4), 187-194.〕 Remains of ''Aepyornis'' adults and eggs have been found; in some cases the eggs have a circumference of more than and a length up to , the largest type of bird egg ever found.〔Mlíkovsky, J. (2003)〕 The egg weighed about .〔Spotila, J. R., Weinheimer, C. J., & Paganelli, C. V. (1981). ''Shell resistance and evaporative water loss from bird eggs: effects of wind speed and egg size''. Physiological zoology, 195-202.〕 The egg volume is about 160 times greater than that of a chicken egg.〔Hawkins, A. F. A. & Goodman, S. M. (2003)〕
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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