bird

[kyledylan]

what is the biggest bird in the world

 

[FP]

Ostrich

[New Forester]

Extant, heaviest, tallest: ostrich.  Followed by cassowaries and emu.

 

Extant, flying, heaviest: male of either great bustard or mute swan.

 

Extant, wingspan:  I think wandering albatross.

 

The two condors get in there somewhere -- largest wing area?

 

Extinct:  Take your choice.  The elephant-birds (Aepyornis) of Madagascar (which only went a few hundred years ago), several species of moa in New Zealand (likewise), a monster predatory thing like a dinosaur from South America from millions of years ago, and a giant bird in Australia weighing nearly half a ton.

 

See: http://www.birding.com/BirdRecords1.htm -- note that some of those records depend upon the species which happen to have been measured and some will have similar relatives.

 

I think there was an extinct condor, much larger than the surviving two.

[M.Winner]

Bella Emburg

[New Forester]

Also see:

http://www.zoomdinosaurs.com/subjects/birds/Earlybirds.shtml

 

[Lindy Loo]

It's got to be my friend Lynne, she is enormous!

[tartanwiz]

The biggest living bird is the ostrich, but the biggest bird on Earth ever (now of course extinct) was Dinornis, which could not fly but roamed the plains of Wyoming 50 million years ago, hunting small mammals.

[sharpy36]

Mandy dingle