Could This Thing *Really* Fly?

[00:00] This video is brought to you by FarmKind, more about them at the end of the video. The Ketzel Coatelos, one of the largest terasurs that ever lived, was able to fly.

[00:12] That doesn't sound right. I mean, look at this thing. It's the size of a giraffe. However, giant terasurs able to fly is really well established in the scientific community.

[00:24] So how on earth did this giant manage to fly? Hi, I'm Ever and this is Minot Earth. Thanks to the fossil record, we know that terasurs had wings with elongated hand bones,

[00:38] just like every other flying vertebrate. But simply having wings doesn't mean you can actually fly. If you're too heavy for the size of those wings, or if you can't flap them fast enough, you'll never get anywhere. And compared to the biggest flying creatures alive today,

[00:54] the Koi Bostard, or the Wandering Albatros, or even the Andean Condor, depending on how you measure it, the Ketzel Coatelos was way, way bigger. But despite this giant terasurs wing span,

[01:06] scientists estimate that it was only about as heavy as a large pig. Now, with a wing-to-mass ratio looking more decent, giant terasurs still need to be strong enough to flap them. And while wing muscles themselves are not preserved in the fossil record,

[01:22] we know terasurs had huge bumps in their four limb bones and highly modified breast bones with ample attachment for powerful chest muscles, just like modern flying birds do.

[01:34] So it's reasonable to believe their wing muscles were pretty broad. On top of that, terasurs had mostly hollow bones that increased the volume of their respirator system,

[01:46] again, just like modern flying birds, which allowed them to deliver tons of oxygen to all those flight muscles. All this likely helped the Ketzel Coatelos big body stay aloft once

[01:58] it was in the air. But getting into the air in the first place is the hardest and most energy-intensive part of flight. Flying birds use their strong leg muscles to launch themselves into the air.

[02:10] That's why the bigger a bird is, the larger and more powerful it's legs tend to be. Giant terasurs were so huge that in order to jump into the air like birds, they would have needed truly gigantic legs that would have made them

[02:25] definitely too heavy to fly. So they solved the whole launching problem in a different way. They used their powerful wings for the dual purpose of taking off and flopping.

[02:38] And this strategy is so efficient that bats independently evolved it as well. By the way, I think this is my favorite fact about giant terasurs. And bats, of course. Once you look at all the evidence and the facts,

[02:51] it makes perfect sense that these giant terasurs could truly soar. They might look too big and wonky, but the Ketzel Coatelos was about as close as we've ever come to a flying pig. Pigs these days, of course, rarely fly. And sorry to be a downer,

[03:09] especially after that uplifting video. But in a lot of places, the conditions they're kept in are hard-breaking. As someone who loves animals, I hate to see any animal suffering so much.

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