Largest organisms is frequently poorly documented and many are subject to conjecture and estimation. The largest living bird, a member of the Struthioniformes, is the common ostrich ("Struthio camelus"), from the plains of Africa and Arabia. A large male ostrich can reach a height of and weigh over . A mass of has been cited for the common ostrich but no wild ostriches of this weight have been verified. Eggs laid by the ostrich can weigh and are the largest eggs in the world today. The largest bird in the fossil record may be the extinct elephant birds ("Aepyornis") of Madagascar, which
Bird egg birds with small clutch size tended to be indeterminate. Many animals feed on eggs. For example, the principal predators of the black oystercatcher's eggs include raccoons, skunks, mink, river and sea otters, gulls, crows and foxes. The stoat ("Mustela erminea") and long-tailed weasel ("M. frenata") steal ducks' eggs. Snakes of the genera "Dasypeltis" and "Elachistodon" specialize in eating eggs. Humans have a long history of both eating wild bird eggs and raising birds for farmed eggs for consumption. Brood parasitism occurs in birds when one species lays its eggs in the nest of another. In some cases, the host's eggs