Megapode the surface of the mound, lying on their backs and scratching at the sand and vegetable matter. Similar to other superprecocial birds, they hatch fully feathered and active, already able to fly and live independently from their parents. In megapodes superprecociality apparently evolved secondarily from brooding and at least loose parental care as more typical in Galliformes, but their reproductive model has been compared to various extinct maniraptors, implying that supreprecociality was common if not ancestral in early birds. Eggs previously assigned to "Genyornis" have been reassigned to giant megapode species. Some dietary and chronological data previously assigned to dromornithids
Megapode was thought to exhibit temperature-dependent sex determination, this was later proven false; temperature does, however, affect embryo mortality and resulting offspring sex ratios. The nonsocial nature of their incubation raises questions as to how the hatchlings come to recognise other members of their species, which is due to imprinting in other members of the order Galliformes. Research suggests an instinctive visual recognition of specific movement patterns is made by the individual species of megapode. Megapode chicks do not have an egg tooth; they use their powerful claws to break out of the egg, and then tunnel their way up to