Comments on: Verne’s Terror Birds

By: Mnynames

Mnynames — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 13:21:47 +0000

Moas are completely unrelated, I’m afraid. They had tiny beaks, tiny heads, and much longer and slender necks by comparison. Moas may still exist, as now and again reports of them do surface, including (I believe) a sort of “blob-Moa” picture within recent decades.

The term “Terror Bird” has always troubled me, mainly because I’ve always associated it with ther Teratornids, because that’s roughly what that would translate to. I would have thought that scientists would no better in nicknaming one group of animals a term used for another group of animals- and both of them birds to boot! And at the time, “Demon Duck of Doom” wasn’t yet taken…

By: YourPTR!

YourPTR! — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 05:06:41 +0000

Wasn’t the Giant Moa a “Terror Bird”? It seems to be about the same size as the birds described here. It survived up until a few hundred years ago and a few may have clinged to survival as late as into the early 19th century. Indeed, one of the much smaller species, at least, may still exist today.

By: mystery_man

mystery_man — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 16:00:54 +0000

At the time, man was probably more concerned with not being eaten by THEM!

By: Darkstream

Darkstream — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 07:17:24 +0000

Fantastic post. Loved it.

I’ve never seen photos of the Terror Bird skeletons before. They gave me quite a surprise. There is no doubt in my mind that Miyazaki based his horseclaw designs in “Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa” on them. In that manga (comic) the horseclaws are trained mounts used in battle. If Terror Birds had indeed been around with man, I wonder if any attempts were made to domesticate them in a similar fashion or if man was too busy planning on how to eat them.

By: Raptorial

Raptorial — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 03:30:39 +0000

Megatherium did indeed live during the Pleistocene and probably encountered humans. So did some of the teratorns, also nicknamed terror birds by some.

By: Rillo777

Rillo777 — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 00:43:51 +0000

I recently viewed a show that indicated that the giant sloth lived currently with humans in Patagonia and may still exist in remote parts of South America. Maybe these terror birds might also live on.

And I also wonder if they were really all that terrible? People have a habit of looking at skulls and making some rather exaggerated claims about the creature’s life based on very little evidence.

By: ladd

ladd — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:17:23 +0000

One of my favorite movies with the classic Ray Harryhausen stop-motion animation. As a kid the giant creatures seemed real and to find out later in life they were, i.e. Terror Birds. Great post!

By: joppa

joppa — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:07:10 +0000

Jules Verne’s books were the gateways to my interest in cryptozoology. Remember the Bigfoot creature in Journey to the Center of the Earth? What a farsighted and splendid writer of his time.

By: DWA

DWA — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 18:06:07 +0000

Whew. The lead-in on the main page had me worried.

But great post. Thanks.

By: busterggi

busterggi — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:39:45 +0000

Fossil remains of Titanis are so scanty that I don’t think we can really determine when they became extinct so don’t give up hope yet.

And we still have Conan Doyle’s ‘Aepyornis Island’ even if Verne is proven wrong.