The Elephant Bird (Aepyornis maximus) inhabited the island of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa. Madagascar was settled around 2000 years ago by African and Indonesian peoples. Legends of the giant roc (rukh) in Arab folklore were probably based on the elephant bird. During the 9th century, Saracen and Indian traders visited Madagascar and other parts of the African coast and would have encountered these birds. In 1298, while imprisoned in Genoa, Marco Polo wrote his memoirs, covering 26 years of travel. In chapter 33, "Concerning the Island of Madagascar" he wrote that the Great Khan had sent him to investigate curious reports of giant birds.
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The Malagasy people had had contact with Arab traders over several centuries, but had fiercely resisted colonisation. The first Europeans to visit the island were the Portuguese in 1500. Dutch and French expeditions established coastal settlements after 1509, penetrating the interior 150 years later. In the 16th century, Dutch, Portuguese and French sailors returned from the Indian Ocean with huge eggs taken as curios. The French established a settlement in 1642, by which time the Elephant Bird had become very rare. The last one probably died in 1649. The first French Governor of Madagascar and Director of the French East India Company, Étienne de Flacourt, wrote, in 1658, "vouropatra - a large bird which haunts the Ampatres and lays eggs like the ostriches; so that the people of these places may not take it, it seeks the most lonely places". In the face of human hunters, the elephant bird was retreating to remoter regions. By 1700, it was gone forever.
The elephant bird was the largest bird ever to have lived. It was a ratite, related to ostriches and emus, though it was unlikely to have been a swift runner. It had massive legs and taloned claws, vestigial wings and a long, powerful neck. Its body was covered in bristling, hair-like feathers, like those of the emu, and its beak resembled a broad-headed spear. It had evolved at a time when birds ruled the earth and had probably existed on Madagascar for 60 million years. In spite of its fearsome appearance (the legendary roc was fierce and ate elephants), it was a herbivore. It had little to fear from other native creatures on Madagascar; it was protected by its huge size and if needs be, could use its feet and heavy beak to protect itself in conflicts with others of its own kind.
The birds resembled heavily built ostriches, with small heads, vestigial wings, and long, powerful legs. They stood 10 ft (3 metres) tall and weighed approximately 1000 lbs (455 kg); although some moas were taller, the elephant bird was more robustly built. Their eggs had a circumference of about 3 ft (91 cm), were about 13 inches (33 cm) long and a capacity of 2 imperial gallons (9 litres). This is the equivalent of 200 hen's eggs and three times the size of the eggs of the largest dinosaurs. Fossilised eggs are still found buried on the island. The photo here is of a replica exhibited at Ipswich Museum, Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. The island would have supported only a small, slow-breeding population and the birds were probably driven into extinction by hunting and the theft of their eggs by humans. The fact that it had existed for 60 million years (much longer than humans) and adapted to a changing world, shows it to have been a very successful species. However, it was also specialised to an island environment with no large predators and was, therefore, not adapted to survive contact with aggressive European humans.
Fossil evidence indicates several other species of elephant bird, ranging from 3 ft (90 cm) to 10 ft (3 metres), had inhabited Madagascar, though most had died out before modern humans had evolved. As well as Aepyornis, one other species, the smaller Mullerornis, probably survived into historic times. The reasons for these birds' extinction are hard to determine as there are no reliable historical records of the pre-European history of Madagascar. They were probably hunted by native people 1000-2000 years before European contact. This was probably subsistence hunting and did not threaten the birds' numbers. Egg collecting by Europeans would have been much more of a threat - such huge eggs can only be laid in small numbers and the birds probably bred slowly. Habitat destruction would have posed a grave threat to such a specialised bird.
