Despite being an entire continent completely devoid of mammalian predators, there are not as many lineages of flightless birds as one might expect of an environment like this. This is because of the unique positioning of Antarctica, with the continent experiencing a polar night across the entire surface, six months of the entire continent receiving a perpetual night. Due to this, land migrations into more hospitable environments like the ones found in the northern hemisphere, are not possible, and herbivores like anatids need to retain their flight in order to fly to South America for greener pastures. For the few that stay, they must survive temperatures below -30 Celsius, and practically no food for those six months of winter.
One group that has perfectly adapted to ensure these winters are the Karanis (Crassopectiniformes). This ancient order of birds was amongst the first to colonize the continent when it first started to thaw, and has found great success through a very unique adaptation. Although they have completely lost their wings, they still retain a fairly robust breastbone that they use not to support large flying muscles. They take advantage of the short growth period of plants on the continent and eat as much as they can, storing all the extra energy in the form of fat that they slowly burn through the winter to supplement the meagre amounts of food they can acquire during it.
They are distributed throughout the continent and are generally very large, with the largest of them being the Titan Karani (Crassopectus corpulentus), with a summer weight of almost 300kg. Even more impressive is the amount of weight they gain for their winter molt, as they can reach over 500kg during this time, almost doubling in weight. They are the widest ranged species of the group, living across the shrublands, tundra and open carpet forests of the continent, feeding on any plant they can cut with their sharp beaks.
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
dededos
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
baratheonpilled
romaincrisis
