e a In the cold North Atlantic the Great Auk was the biggest bird around It weighed as much as a sack of potatoes and stood as tall as a three year old It had a formidable beak and strong webbed feet A brilliant swimmer it flew through the water as swiftly as the fish it hunted It could hold its breath for minutes and could dive so deep it would disappear from sight And it was long lived its lifespan was twenty years or
Sounds impressive doesn't it But wait There was a slight glitch in this expert fish hunter s design Over millions of years of evolution its wings though eventually perfect for propelling it underwater became so stunted so small they couldn t get the bird off the ground The Great Auk couldn t fly to save its life
O O On
Most of the time being flightless wasn t a big deal As a true seabird the Great Auk s home for ten months of the year was the open ocean where it had no need to fly When sleeping or at rest in fine weather or foul it floated on the surface rising and falling with the swells Its waterproof feathers and thick layer of fat kept it warm When hungry it dove steering with its large webbed feet and flapping its tiny flattened wings to propel itself into the schools of fish it caught with its over sized beak It was so streamlined and so fast it had no fear of predators at sea But when it was on land that was another story As the Great Auk evolved into a lethal fisher not only did its wings shrink but its feet also gradually moved farther and farther back on its body Having its feet so close to its tail made them perfect to use as a rudder But they were not very useful for getting around on land When the Great Auk struggled out of the water onto a rocky shore it could only toddle along awkwardly in a fully upright position so awkwardly that one of its earliest English names was The
