"We need to find wing bones to put the theory beyond all doubt," he said. "It means they were little and volant (able to fly) and that they flew to New Zealand."ĭr Worthy said it was not uncommon for birds to "jump" from Australia to New Zealand, citing the Mallard duck, the little banded dotterel and the cattle egret as three species which regularly fly back and forth.īut he said the research, published by the Society of Avian Paleontology and Evolution, was not conclusive. "If, as the DNA suggests, the kiwi is related to the emu, then both shared a common ancestor that could fly," he said. Instead, he said an ancestor of the kiwi dating back 20 million years discovered in the South Island was more closely related to another giant flightless bird, the emu.ĭr Worthy, himself an expatriate New Zealander, says it appears the fossilised South Island bird and the emu evolved from a common ancestor, which originated in Australia but also spread to New Zealand. Palaeontologist Trevor Worthy of Adelaide's Flinders University said fossilised remains suggested the flightless bird did not evolve from the extinct giant moa, as has long been assumed. It does not store any personal data.New Zealand's iconic kiwi bird may have an Australian ancestor, according to new research that suggests it evolved from a bird that flew to the island nation from Australia. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. While most birds get most of their information through their eyes, kiwi sense it through the tip of their beak and their whiskers. Evolution therefore favoured abandoning vision as a key sense, setting kiwi out on an avian evolutionary limb. The researchers suggest that kiwi evolved differently because the energy they would need to run large eyes would not be balanced by the information gleaned from a dimly lit forest floor, especially since most of their food is hidden underground. However, the parts of the brain devoted to touch and smell are large.
The parts of a kiwi’s brain that serve vision were virtually non-existent, making their brains unique among birds. However, the researchers from the Universities of Birmingham, Lincoln, and Auckland, found that kiwi’s eyes are very small and their visual fields are the smallest yet recorded in any bird. While large eyes are heavy, for a non-flyer like the kiwi weight should not have been a concern. In 2007, a team of researchers released a paper suggesting that kiwi eyes have evolved differently to those of most nocturnal animals which often evolve large eyes to gather what little light there is.
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