Ratites are a special, peculiar kind of bird. Flightless, they've developed common strategies to compensate. Also all very strong. They include ostriches (from Africa), rheas (South America), emus (Australia), and the extinct moas (New Zealand).
New Zealand, because of its pre-human isolation, is rich in flightless birds. The other places aren't so much. Yet there they are, seemingly related and spread out over the globe. Scientists are torn over whether they have a common geographical origin, perhaps on the supercontinent of Gondwanaland, or if it's entirely a matter of convergent evolution.
They are enchanting to watch, I know.
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When I saw this I was reminded of having read about the Elephant Birds of Madagascar- 10 feet tall and weighing a thousand pounds they were the largest bird ever to have lived on earth. Since they didn't become extinct until around 700+ years ago so skeletons (and eggs) have been found.
I like flightless birds too and the visdeos you posted are very cool. One other thing I do remember is that Johnny Cash had several ostriches on his farm/ranch (?). One afternoon he happened upon one of them that was in a bad temper and it almost killed him. You really wouldn't want to get too close.
Interesting thing about the elephant birds is that if they became extinct around 700 years ago it would still be a pretty recent event when European explorers showed up. Not quite living memory, but recent enough so that there would be family lore about these gigantic birds, if you talked to the Malagasy people - something admittedly European settlers weren't always up for doing - someone could tell you about their ancestors meeting one.
Gigantopithecus was an ape that lived in Asia and was also about ten feet full grown. They died out a lot longer ago, but humans do seem to have met them.
It must have been something walking or driving past Johnny Cash's estate and seeing ostriches peering over the fence, maybe curious or maybe just bored.
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