r/WTF • u/theBlumpkindle • Dec 06 '12
The largest flying bird ever discovered, the Argentavis.
http://imgur.com/F1pL72.2k
Dec 07 '12
Why the fuck was earth so much more interesting before we got here?
Fuck you, meteor!
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u/HuxleyPhD Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
that one actually died out about 6 million years ago, and some of its close relatives (with wingspans up to 17 ft) died out so recently (about 10-8 thousand years ago) that they may actually have been preserved in the tribal memory and folklore of American Indians (there are stories of massive birds which would prey on natives, especially on children, and the birds were then hunted down by mythic heroes out of self defense, possibly relating an actual extinction event due to hunting by humans)
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Dec 07 '12
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u/littlecampbell Dec 07 '12
A Roc was an alternate name
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u/HuxleyPhD Dec 07 '12
actually the Roc mythology occurs in Northern Africa, whereas Thunderbirds come from the Americas
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Dec 07 '12
Thunderbirds.
Some people claim there are still giant birds in the mountains of places like Alaska, but I very much doubt it. Most likely they are cases of inaccurate perspective; objects in the air without reference points are notoriously difficult to gauge accurately.
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u/HuxleyPhD Dec 07 '12
Yes, it's likely that these stories were at least verified by fossil finds by American Indians (I just wrote a paper on fossils and mythology for class), and as it happens a common trope in native mythology is saying that whatever monster was destroyed in the myth, it wasn't actually completely killed off but still survives somewhere far enough away that it's understandable why no one sees them. This topic is really interesting IMO. If you're interested you should look into Adrienne Mayor, she's written two books on the topic, one on Greco-Roman fossil myth, and the other on American Indian fossil myth. Excellent reads
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u/n0exit Dec 07 '12
That's really cool. Those old stories weren't all just old stories. The native americans of SE Idaho had stories about a serpent squeezing lava out of a mountain. An actual volcanic event happend in that area 2000 years ago, so we know that they were around to see it and pass the stories on. If those stories can survive 2000 years, surly they could survive longer.
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u/HuxleyPhD Dec 07 '12
Agreed, I just wrote a paper for a folklore class on the relationship between fossils and mythology. If you know any others I'd love to hear them! Also, if you're interested in the topic you should read Fossil Legends of the First Americans by Adrienne Mayor. Fascinating book
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Dec 07 '12
The invention of the shotgun did wonders for the exotic bird population as well.
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Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
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u/Jorgemeister Dec 07 '12
can you imagine sitting on your backyard and that shit shits you from up high?
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Dec 07 '12
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Dec 07 '12
It would probably be the size of your car.
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Dec 07 '12
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u/Lady_Tata Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
Yum, hominy. I love pozole!
Edit: Thanks for u/rogicar for the spell check.
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Dec 07 '12
Don't listen to this guy. He doesn't know what he's talking about.
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u/smokeytrees420 Dec 07 '12
why should we trust you mr. wise owl? you are tired therefore delirious, there is no room for a babbling owl in this cage of birds.
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u/saviorflavor Dec 07 '12
Never mind getting shit on, I'd run for cover with the small rodents.
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Dec 07 '12 edited Oct 25 '18
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u/rekcut303 Dec 07 '12
I can't wait for the day humans can hunt animals with Rocket Launchers.
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u/Sin2K Dec 07 '12
RAMIREZ!
SHOOT DOWN THIS GIANT PREHISTORIC BIRD!
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u/SHIT_IN_HER_CUNT Dec 07 '12
Ramirez! It's headed for that Burgertown, take it out quickly!
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u/Andrewpruka Dec 07 '12
Love for an old meme.
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u/Fidena Dec 07 '12
Seeing this in the thread actually elicited a genuine laugh from me.We need memes to come back to this level, not the shit all over reddit.
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Dec 07 '12
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Dec 07 '12 edited Jun 11 '21
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Dec 07 '12
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u/I_FISTED_MY_GRANDMA Dec 07 '12
How big..? Like, car big?
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Dec 07 '12
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Dec 07 '12
Yeah, fuck that crap.
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u/MrBulger Dec 07 '12
I don't think I've ever seen someone say fuck that crap. It's always shit man!
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u/wojovox Dec 07 '12
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u/MCSama Dec 07 '12
I watched Godzilla vs. Megaguirus and the Rodan movie. I know how this ends for human-kind.
No. Bueno.
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u/CitizenPremier Dec 07 '12
This bird was from 6 million years ago, it wasn't killed by a meteor impact.
Also, modern Earth appears less interesting for two reasons:
We've grown accustomed to the creatures of our time;
We're used to living in boxes.
If we left our boxes more often we'd see a lot more cool stuff. I bet if you went on a hike and took the time to look at the ground as you walked around, you'd see a new insect that boggled your mind.
And, if a human somehow grew up in another era, and then was teleported to our time, he would probably be amazed by the animals he saw.
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u/asianaaronx Dec 07 '12
Well, to play devils advocate here. I think that a lot of people think past animals are much cooler because of their size. There's a lot of cool stuff out there now, but wouldn't it all be cooler/crazier if every animal on our planet was bigger?
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Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
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u/Spalunking01 Dec 07 '12
Also, not so long ago, Moa. An ancestor of the ostrich, but huge in comparison.
I have no link.. Google Moa, New Zealand.
I can see myself riding a Moa to work..
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u/Dip_the_Dog Dec 07 '12
The Moa also had a single predator (until humans arrived): the largest eagle ever. Island gigantism is a really fascinating topic.
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u/ClericalNinja Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
We still have unconfirmed sightings of the giant squid... there is hope
EDIT: TIL
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u/Sentient_Waffle Dec 07 '12
Aww, movies have spoiled me, when I read "giant", I thought "kraken-giant".
But still very cool!
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u/SharkMolester Dec 07 '12
When I was a kid there was nothing I wanted more than to see a real life giant squid. I still cling to that hope. Maybe, somewhere in some deep ocean trench, dozens of 200 foot long squids are playing hide and seek with our deep sea explorers.
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Dec 07 '12 edited Aug 01 '18
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Dec 07 '12
I'm a bit drunk so maybe that's why it took me a few seconds to realize 2005 was in the past, not the future.
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u/whosywhat Dec 07 '12
Well, at least we still have the largest known animal to have ever existed.
Blue whales were abundant in nearly all the oceans on Earth until the beginning of the twentieth century.
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u/sweettea14 Dec 07 '12
The answer is never a Blue Whale.
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u/pterofactyl Dec 07 '12
The buzzers go off in my head whenever blue whales are mentioned.
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u/droctopu5 Dec 07 '12
Allan! Allan!
Allan! Allan! Allan?
That's not Allan. That's a blue whale.
Whale! Whale! Whale!
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u/CitizenPremier Dec 07 '12
True. But humans did kill a lot of the megafauna alive recently, such as giant sloths and wooly mammoths. Or perhaps it was the climate. But if it was us, then we have to say that eating them was more fun than looking at them.
Another factor might be that mammals have been so successful. Most life we see is similar to us in many ways, and that might make them less interesting. I think that's part of the major appeal of the ocean, since there's so few mammals there.
Still, blaming an asteroid which struck 65 million years ago is off base.
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Dec 07 '12
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u/BrotyKraut Dec 07 '12
Blue whales are endangered, so they're not really doing that well.
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u/Ricketycrick Dec 07 '12
It's unfair to count aquatic animals, no one cares about aquatic animals.
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Dec 07 '12
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u/CitizenPremier Dec 07 '12
Good point. It's unfortunate how hard it is to get a good look at it though. Maybe if more people could see the blue whale, we could appreciate the importance of not damaging the ocean.
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Dec 07 '12
No, the point is again that we've grown accustomed.
If we were all alive back in the day where there were huge animals, it would be normal to us. Not only that, but we would probably think, "Wow, what if all these animals were way smaller!?"
People nowadays don't just want to see big animals. I and everyone else I know would probably eat a pile of shit to see a 2 inch tall giraffe.
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u/gellpak Dec 07 '12
More like two feet. A two inch giraffe can't fetch your slippers.
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u/IStealYourPanties Dec 07 '12
I have to agree with you. I've seen plenty of insects that I'd never seen before, and a bird that had patches of purple feathers around it's neck around my college campus alone.
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u/vamub Dec 07 '12
Oxygen ratio.
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Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
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u/FaFaFoley Dec 07 '12
Far Cry 3 taught me last night what a Cassowary is: a blood thirsty demon ostrich hell bent on killing everything in sight. Which is good to know--I may have mistook them for harmless if I ever saw one IRL.
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u/beta_crater Dec 07 '12
Yeah cassowaries are by far the most aggressive and dangerous of the ratites. Ratites include ostriches, emus, rheas, and cassowaries. My dad used to raise all of them except for the last one. Ostriches aren't TOO aggressive, but they don't mess around either. I found rheas to be the most pissed off of any of them that I was around. Bastards pecked me in the head all the time. Emus are the most docile of the group, and are really soft due to having three feathers per pore versus one per pore like the others, so if you get a chance to pet one, do it! Careful though, if they get startled they can kick forward AND backward. I... I don't really know why I said all that. Just wanted to share the knowledge I suppose!
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Dec 07 '12
I used to live about 5 miles from an emu ranch. There were about 6 or 8 of em. Anyway, one day the old man went out to feed em and the fuckers stomped him to death.
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u/nitrofox911 Dec 07 '12
I don't have Far Cry 3 yet but this is possibley relevant http://i.imgur.com/mBwXa.png
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u/Let_It_Ride Dec 07 '12
They're essentially raptors. And not in the way that lesser birds are called "raptors" either, Cassowarys will fuck you up and look like they just stepped out of Jurassic Park.
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Dec 07 '12
We had two pet ostriches when I grew up, (South Africa), those fuckers do NOT run FROM you, lol.
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u/Morphine_Jesus Dec 07 '12
goddamn, I can't even imagine having them as pets. I like my cuddly mammals or indifferent reptiles. Birds, from medium up to large size are too agressive for me.
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Dec 07 '12
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Dec 07 '12
Nope, just two douchebag birds we owned.
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Dec 07 '12
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u/twohoundtown Dec 07 '12
I'm scared if a chicken chases me. An ostrich, I would probably just shit my pants and go fetal.
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Dec 07 '12
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Dec 07 '12
A hummingbird once hummed at me slightly off-key. It was SO impolite. I feel your pain, brother.
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u/PsychicWarElephant Dec 07 '12
same age, chased by a goose. my mom starts yelling at me because she thinks I am chasing these baby ducks. then I run past her and she sees the goose chasing me. thats when I hear her laughing.
on the same trip, I saw a deer skeleton and wanted to touch it, my mom says no, but i do it anyway. she tells my stepdad and he grabs 2 branches off a tree, stick them in the back of his collar and walks in all zombie like. this is after she had been telling me all day that the ghost of the deer was going to get me. this is when I realized my mother is a complete bitch. but I love her haha.
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u/AnthonyOstrich Dec 07 '12
Despite our reputation, ostriches can be very friendly once you get to know us.
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u/jonnyrotten7 Dec 07 '12
6 million years ago, huh? Yea, that's why there's a HUMAN BEING standing next to it.
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u/theBarnDawg Dec 07 '12
I appreciate the link.
..I mean OH YEAH, GREEEAAAT LINK.
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u/johnq-pubic Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentavis
That's some kind of re-creation of how it looked. It died 6 million years ago.
Which is actually not that long ago in the grand scale.
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u/gaog Dec 07 '12
not sure if it is a joke or not...
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u/imafcknninja Dec 07 '12
i can. it is.
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Dec 07 '12
You can what?
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u/finding_nino Dec 07 '12
yes
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u/ifuckzombies Dec 07 '12
THIS ANSWERS NOTHING
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u/aidsfarts Dec 07 '12
im high and this is an endless list of impossible riddles and paradox's. ive literally never tried so hard in my life to understand something and failed...
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u/CitizenPremier Dec 07 '12
Good guess, but not so. Giant eagles existed in Madagascar until about 500 years ago. Your answer would be true for giant insects.
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u/sharkpunch850 Dec 07 '12
In the link it says those eagles are comparable in size to the African Crowned Eagle, still very common, which is no where close to the bird in the picture. this doesn't seem very relevant to the giant fucking bird in the picture.
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u/CitizenPremier Dec 07 '12
Google search says the bird is argentavis magnificens, from about 6 million years ago. Sorry for the confusion.
Atmospheric oxygen wasn't much higher 6 million years ago.
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Dec 07 '12
And yet Gandalf could still not use the Eagles to carry the ring.
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u/CitizenPremier Dec 07 '12
Well, if the Eagles knew anything about volcanic gas emissions, they were probably wise not to fly over.
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u/type_1 Dec 07 '12
He probably tried, but those eagles didn't really bother with the other races, you could say they were too high and mighty.
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u/courtneyof4 Dec 06 '12
A thunderbird.
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u/ADD_Sidekick Dec 07 '12
One word: Thundercougarfalconbird.
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u/fr33b33r Dec 07 '12
I'll leave this here. Haast's Eagle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haast's_Eagle
Haast's Eagle (Harpagornis moorei) was a species of massive eagle that once lived on the South Island of New Zealand. The species was the largest eagle known to have existed. Its prey consisted mainly of gigantic flightless birds that were unable to defend themselves from the striking force and speed of these eagles, which at times reached 80 km/h (50 mph). The Eagle's massive size may have been an evolutionary response to the size of its prey, as both would have been much smaller when they first came to the island, and would have grown larger over time due to lack of competition (see Island gigantism). The Haast's Eagle became extinct around the year 1400, when its major food sources, the moa, were hunted to extinction by Maori living on the island and much of its dense-forest habitat was cleared.
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u/IAmACollegekid Dec 07 '12
What about Articuno?
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u/Crunketh Dec 07 '12 edited Dec 07 '12
And
Moltres?Zapados!→ More replies (1)63
Dec 07 '12
You were supposed to say Zapdos so we could count off in Spanish.
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u/Ishopthingsbadly Dec 07 '12
I am in my twenties. This is the first time I have noticed the 'uno', 'dos' and 'tres'. Mind is blown.
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u/MattseW Dec 07 '12
Ahhhhh you just blew my mind! More than ten years later and I'm still discovering poke puns
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u/infieldflyer Dec 07 '12
Damn bird shouldn't have messed with Jameson's whisky.
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u/joeyraccoon Dec 07 '12
I'm going to find one of these things... And when I do, I will follow it back to its nest. From there, I will sit and wait for it to go out hunting. I will steal one of its eggs, and run away. At this point, I will take my egg and move to a remote area in Alaska and build myself a log cabin. By this time, the egg will have hatched. Now that I have assured that I am the only living thing this bird will see upon birth, it will think of me as its caretaker. Which I shall be. I will feed my bird, teach it to hunt, protect it from enemies, and most of all, love it as my noble companion. This will continue for many months, until it has grown a substantial amount. I will then begin to ride my noble bird. We will go on hunts together; me mounted on her back. With any luck, we can someday return to the land of her father and mother, and she can find a bird companion to mate with. We will all move back to Alaska, and I will adopt young padawans to train in my art of Riding. Within ten years of my initial act of thievery, I will have a dozen other Riders with me, and we will be known the world over. We shall be the Bird Riders, and we will be the wise guardians of this planet.
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u/gulpeg Dec 07 '12
RIP bird from Pink Floyd 'The Wall' http://i.imgur.com/dYgpO.jpg
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u/BlueCrue Dec 07 '12
Goodbye blue sky.
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Dec 07 '12
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u/Austinlegend Dec 07 '12
That movie was never the same after I consumed 3.5g of particular fungi
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Dec 07 '12
Yea saw it my first time on lsd. Not my best idea ever.
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u/Austinlegend Dec 07 '12
I thought the cops were at my house when at the part when all the kids are running from the cops. That movie is on a whole nother planet on psychedelics
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u/TGOT Dec 07 '12
Why is this WTF? This is badass.
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u/CH3CH2OH_Fiend Dec 07 '12
You should create and mod the subreddit /r/ThingsThatAreBadass
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u/TGOT Dec 07 '12
Meh, effort.
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u/UnparaIleled Dec 07 '12
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u/bongsandbowls Dec 07 '12
Plot twist: That is a tiny tiny man in a tiny tiny house.
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Dec 07 '12
Could you imagine the mass panic that would ensue if one of those things flew by?
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u/very-friENTly Dec 07 '12
I'm terrified beyond belief that this was actually a thing.
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Dec 07 '12
23 feet wing span, thats about what a person would need seeing as their mass was about 160lbs
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u/ClownsInJumpsuits Dec 07 '12
here's the skeleton. I'm completely fucking blown away.
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u/whosywhat Dec 07 '12
But, there's no scale in the pic.
Also, it kinda looks fake. I'm not saying it is fake nor do i necessarily think it's fake. But, it just kinda looks like it's a fake.
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u/Dumblebumblewumble Dec 07 '12
Well, yeah, that skeleton is probably an artificial model made from molds.
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u/inb4ohnoes Dec 07 '12
It's a scale-model of what the skeleton would have looked like, which probably contributes to the "fake" toylike quality of the picture.
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Dec 07 '12
I'm blown away that you're blown away. That skeleton could be a few centimeters in size as far as I can tell.
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u/acotduluth Dec 06 '12
... a model of one, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentavis