Flightless bird more species of flightless birds (including the kiwi, several species of penguins, the takahe, the weka, the moa, and several other extinct species) than any other such location. One reason is that until the arrival of humans roughly a thousand years ago, there were no large land predators in New Zealand; the main predators of flightless birds were larger birds. Ratites belong to the superorder Palaeognathae birds, which include the volant tinamou, and are believed to have evolved flightlessness independently multiple times within their own group. Some birds evolved flightlessness in response to the absence of predators, for example on
Cuban flightless crane Cuban flightless crane The Cuban flightless crane ("Grus cubensis") is a large, extinct species of crane that was endemic to the island of Cuba in the Caribbean. The remains were found in Pleistocene deposits in Pinar del Rio. Probably derived from an early invasion of sandhill cranes from North America, it differed from that species by, as well as larger size, having a proportionately broader bill, stockier legs, and with reduced wings and pectoral girdle indicating that it may have been flightless. Currently, the only extant Caribbean crane is the Cuban sandhill crane, "Antigone canadensis nesiotes", an endangered subspecies of