OMG! Pūkeko! 🖤 Up where I used to live, in Whangārei (near the top end of the North Island of New Zealand), the entire area is overrun with these birds.
They scream at all hours of the day and night where I am. Not uncommon for me to be up late watching something or gaming and they'll be fighting somewhere and screaming all over the place.
good video, there are heaps of pukeko around where I live in Napier. some people around here think they're flightless, but I've heard that's because the pukeko in hawkes bay are too fat to fly because of all the fruit they steal from orchards :D
I did when I first saw them, the body shape is so similar to a chicken but they hide fairly large wings on them. I wish there was a place around here that kept them, they were one of my favorite birds to watch.
Very interesting. But i think flying bird, in general, l can not evolve into larger animal unless it gives up flight. Smaller animal evolve faster. For flightless animal bigger means better to a point, when faster microbes and other smaller parasites can compromise the larger organisms. I feel being to large is the way of wooly mammoth. In the air it is the lighter that is champion. Like the fight between the crow and the scrub jay.
