Which bird is missing its wings?

Because kiwis don’t fly, they can put a lot more energy into producing eggs If you ask someone to describe a bird, one of the first things people think of is “birds have wings”. But that’s not true: just look at the kiwis!

Kiwis are native to New Zealand, and are the smallest of the ratites (the family of birds that ostriches and emus belong to). Because New Zealand is an island, it was very hard for animals to come and go before the arrival of humans. New Zealand didn’t have hunters like wolves or big cats (the only native mammals are three kinds of bats), so kiwis could live on the ground without fear of being eaten by predators.

Unlike most birds, kiwis have a great sense of smell thanks to the nostrils on the end of their beaks, and can sniff out insects and earthworms hidden beneath the ground. This easy access to food and lack of predators meant that kiwis had no need to fly, and today, there’s almost no trace of their wings left. The tiny claw-like remnant of a kiwi’s wing is hidden beneath the bristly feathers.

(the bigger an egg is, the harder it is for the bird to get off the ground). In fact, kiwis produce the largest egg in relation to their body size. One egg can weigh one quarter of the kiwi’s weight! If humans had babies that big, a newborn baby would be the size of a five-year-old!