A few days ago, I wrote about the smallest of the ancient jaw birds, the kiwi bird, and also told you the difference between the ancient jaw bird and the modern jaw bird. Simply put, the ancient jaw bird does not fly, but it has a strong body and legs, and is good at running, and the emu, crane ostrich and ostrich we are familiar with belong to the ancient jaw bird. In addition, there is the largest surviving bird among the ancient jaw birds, that is, the ostrich struthio camelus.
Adult male ostriches are 2.1 to 2.8 meters tall, and female ostriches are shorter, but also 1.7 to 2.1 meters tall, which is a veritable giant bird that is good at running but cannot fly.
So are there any flying birds that also have tall stature? There are also many tall cranes in the order Heliomorph, the most representative of which is the red-necked crane antigone.
Cranes are rich in birds with long legs and large necks, and the idiom of standing out from the flock is heard by everyone.
Wild red-necked cranes are found in India, Nepal, Myanmar, Cambodia, Australia and other places, and like most cranes, they prefer to live in wetlands, swamps and plains close to water, and are the highest flying birds in existence.
The red-necked crane is 1.2 to 1.8 meters tall, and there are also individuals with a height of more than 1.8 meters, which is also tall in humans. Although the red-necked crane is very tall, it weighs only 5 to 12 kilograms, after all, if it is too heavy, it will not be able to fly. Even so, red-necked cranes still need huge wings to provide flight, so their wingspan is 2.2 to 2.8 meters wide, which is among the best in the whole bird.
The red-necked crane takes its name from its appearance.
The adult red-necked crane is white from a distance, and the cheeks and upper neck are bright red, although the color scheme is not as beautiful as the red-crowned crane, but it is also more fairy. However, there is an old saying that goes, you can look at it from a distance and don't play with it, as long as you get close enough, you can find the truth about the color matching of the red-necked crane:
The upper part of their head and neck has no feathers and is bald, and the seemingly white oval area on the top of the head is actually pure baldness, and the red color on its face and neck is actually densely arranged with sarcoma protrusions, which can definitely make the scalp of dense phobia patients tingle.
The picture below is a close-up of the head and neck of the red-necked crane, and it is recommended that the secret fear partner quickly cross it.
Not only that, some red-necked cranes also have black fluff on their red necks, which look like beards, and ordinary people with bad mentality really can't look closely.
In addition, the red-necked crane distributed in Australia is often confused with the Australian crane, in fact, it is very simple to distinguish them, the Australian crane only has the back of the head is red, and the cheeks and upper neck of the red-necked crane are red. If you think of the red-crowned crane, the red color on the top of their heads is not actually a feather, but like the neck of the red-necked crane and the back of the head of the Australian crane, it is a dense red tumor.
This color only appears after they have sexual maturity, and is more vivid during breeding, and chicks and juvenile birds do not have such a bright color, and the color of unhealthy and weak individuals will be slightly dull.
Let's talk about the ownership of the red-necked crane.
They were first described in 1758 by the father of modern taxonomy, linnaeus, but at that time Linnaeus classified the red-necked crane as the heron genus Area in the heron family and named it antiigone.
It can be seen that Linnaeus was naughty again, giving the names of characters in ancient Greek mythological works to animals (this name comes from the play of the same name created by the ancient Greek playwright sophocles in 442 BC, translated as Antigone in Chinese), which is not the first time he has done so, and to give a few similar examples:
Tamarix monkey saguinus oedipus (King Oedipus, who is still the aforementioned Father of Antigone), Euphorbia longifolia dynastes hercules (Hercules), Apollo silk butterfly paranassius apollo (sun god Apollo), Ochre-faced moth Aerontia atropos (Goddess of Destiny Atlopos).
No way, Linnaeus gave a total of more than 12,000 kinds of creatures, is a famous "naming maniac" in the academic world, and occasionally stealing a lazy name to install a ready-made name on the head of the creature is nothing.
Continuing with the red-necked crane, the time came to 1881, the British zoologist Edward Blyth published a paper, that the red-necked crane should be classified into the crane genus grus of the crane family, and the later one hundred years of the red-necked crane also remained in the crane genus, until 2010, the academic community through the latest analysis of phylogenetics and gene sequencing means found that the original crane genus is actually a multi-lineage group, so it was reclassified, the red-necked crane separately established the red-necked crane genus antiigone, the scientific name antiigone Antigone, until now, so any claim to the scientific name of the red-necked crane grus antigone is already a lagging and inaccurate statement.
Cranes are characterized by long necks , long beaks , and long legs , and prefer to live near waters.
The same is true of the red-necked crane, which forages in shallow water and farmland, churns through the sediment with its long beak in search of food, and mainly eats aquatic or near-aquatic insects, frogs, small fish, shrimp and crabs, snails, and also eats some aquatic plants and grain seeds. In rare cases, red-necked cranes also eat reptiles such as bird eggs, small water snakes and lizards, basically finding what to eat and what to eat, which is a typical omnivore.
Because the early red-necked crane was often active in human agricultural areas, it would eat grain and crops, and also turn over the soil, so it did not have a good relationship with the farmers in the distribution areas. But now the red-necked crane has become a vulnerable (vu) species, officially protected in almost all native areas.
Red-necked cranes breed mainly from July to October each year. During breeding, courtship single red-necked cranes and paired red-necked cranes will perform "wedding dances" between each other, jumping in circles, chirping, stretching their necks, and spreading their wings to shake their feathers, which is very ritualistic.
In addition, most of the red-necked cranes practice lifelong monogamy, and after the death of their spouses, the surviving red-necked cranes have a chance to go on hunger strike and die, which is regarded as a symbol of love loyalty.
In contrast, another more famous "love bird", the Mandarin Duck aix galericulata, is actually the partridge deprived of the name of the Red Ma Duck, the Mandarin Duck itself is not monogamous, the Red Ma Duck and the Red Neck Crane are the birds that are more loyal to love.
However, not all red-necked cranes are loyal to love, after all, individual differences are common, and occasionally there are cases of separated partners or replacement of spouses among red-necked cranes.