Elephant bird determined that "Vorombe titan" reached weights of and stood tall, making it the world's largest bird, slightly larger than the much older "Dromornis stirtoni". Elephant birds have been extinct since at least the 17th century. Étienne de Flacourt, a French governor of Madagascar in the 1640s and 1650s, mentions an ostrich-like bird said to inhabit unpopulated regions, though it is unclear whether he was repeating folk tales passed on from generations earlier. In 1659, Flacourt wrote of the "vouropatra – a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places
The Eagle and the Beetle right of asylum is guaranteed by Zeus but the eagle, being the bird of Zeus, arrogantly disregards this and tears the hare to pieces. In revenge, the beetle climbs to the eagle’s nest and rolls out its eggs, following it up the higher it builds. Finally the eagle lays its eggs in the lap of Zeus but the beetle flies about the god’s head, or in some versions rolls a ball of dung onto him, causing the god to leap up and let the eggs fall to the ground. There are alternative accounts in which the episode of the hare