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
Birds of New Zealand Birds of New Zealand The birds of New Zealand evolved into an avifauna that included a large number of endemic species (that is, species found in no other country). As an island archipelago New Zealand accumulated bird diversity and when Captain James Cook arrived in the 1770s he noted that the bird song was deafening. The mix includes species with unusual biology such as the kakapo which is the world's only flightless, nocturnal, lek (competitive display) breeding parrot, but also many species that are similar to neighboring land areas. A process of colonization, speciation and extinction has been at play