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Annakacygna – The Ultimate Bird
Extinct swans with remarkable adaptations for a life at sea
© Gunma Museum of Natural History
Like today’s swans, the extinct species Annakacygna hajimei and Annakacygna yoshiiensis were quite large. But unlike their modern relatives, these birds lived most of their lives out at sea, and their fossils reveal remarkable adaptations to this unusual lifestyle. This led the researchers who first described these species to dub them “the ‘ultimate bird’ that ever existed.”
BirdNote®
Annakacygna – The Ultimate Bird
Written by Adé Ben-Salahuddin
This is BirdNote.
[Whooper Swan flight call]
Swans like this Whooper Swan are impressive animals. They’re among the largest flying birds around today. But 11.5 million years ago, two extinct species from Japan took an even more epic direction.
[Open sea soundscape]
Like today’s swans, Annakacygna hajimei and Annakacygna yoshiiensis were quite large. But unlike their modern relatives, these birds lived most of their lives out at sea, and their fossils reveal remarkable adaptations to this unusual lifestyle.
They had wide spatula-shaped beaks somewhat like modern shoveler ducks. The dense bones of their wide hips let them remain stable on choppy waters while filtering plankton from the sea surface with their oversized heads.
Their wings weren’t built for flight, but had the musculature and range of motion to suggest they weren’t useless. In combination with the flexible tail, they could form a cradle for carrying chicks on their back, which some swans still do now with their young.
The remarkable anatomy of Annakacygna reveals a creature uniquely adapted to thrive in an environment quite unlike what you’d expect for a swan. To quote the scientists who named it in a 2022 study, “In a sense, it is the ‘ultimate bird’ that ever existed.”
[Whooper Swan flock calls]
For BirdNote, I’m Adé Ben-Salahuddin.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Whooper Swan ML63144941 recorded by Andrew Spencer.
Whooper Swan Xeno Canto 757254 recorded by Lars Edenius.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote February 2023
Narrator: Adé Ben-Salahuddin
ID# annakacygna-01-2023-02-20 annakacygna-01
Reference:
Original publication naming and describing Annakacygna
Plain language description of Annakacygna from Bug Woman – Adventures in London
