For as long as people have been taking to the water they have been returning with stories of monsters and mythical beasts of all kinds. It is a proud tradition that has lives even today in the stories of every North American bass fisherman. Usually, the stories that ancient mariners would recount were of huge ocean dwelling beasts like the Kraken, but in the early days of discovery, sailors were often the first to tell of new lands and peoples as well. ...and like most modern day fishermen, they just had to be taken at their word.

But when early Arabian and Indian explorers started returning from their journeys along the coast of Africa with stories of gigantic birds many times the size of a man, they brought evidence...huge eggs, up to three feet in circumference. They were the eggs of a bird that would later come to be known as the Elephant Bird, or Vouron Patra (Aepyornis maximus). The eggs that the Elephant Bird laid were larger than the largest dinosaur eggs, and, in fact, I have heard that some mathmetician-types somewhere have calculated that they were as large as a structurally functional egg could possibly be...the largest single cells to have ever existed on Earth.

The Elephant Bird is thought to have been the inspiration for the Roc (or Ruhk) made famous in the stories of Sinbad and the accounts of Marco Polo. While Aepyornis was by no means as large and terrible as the elephant-eating Roc, it WAS the largest bird that ever lived. The flightless bird grew to around ten or eleven feet tall, and is estimated to have weighed up to 1100 pounds. By comparison, a BIG Ostrich will go eight feet and 300 pounds. Only the largest of the New Zealand Moas were taller, some reaching thirteen feet, but they weren't as massively built.

The home of the Elephant Bird was the island of Madagascar, off the eastern coast of Africa. The island was first populated by African and Indonesian peoples that are thought to have arrived around the time of Christ, about 2000 years ago. They were, in turn, visited by Muslim traders from East Africa and the Comoro Islands in the ninth century. The first Europeans to visit the island were the Portuguese in 1500, but Europeans didn't really establish a foothold on the island until the French settled there beginning in 1642. The Elephant Bird was probably still around at that time but it had already become very rare. One of the only contemporary European accounts of the bird was written by the first French Governor of Madagascar, Étienne de Flacourt, who 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".

Flacourt...as you probably know...was subsequently killed by pirates, and so it is unclear whether or not he, or ANY European for that matter, ever actually saw the bird in the flesh. The French basically stayed to the coast and didn't penetrate the interior of the island for many years. (The Malagasy natives weren't particularly happy that they were there at all to begin with and weren't afraid to let them know it whenever the chance presented itself.)

Not that it really matters whether a European ever saw one...It's just that Europeans seem to be the only ones who feel compelled to write down the exact date that the last sighting of a given animal occurred. (Personally I find this habit a little morbid, but it makes my page more interesting.) The natives' histories of the Elephant Bird, however, rarely describe it as an aggressive bird, and more often portray it as a shy, peaceful giant. I admit it isn't as much fun to imagine Aepyornis maximus quietly munching on fruit while lemurs frolic around his feet. I much prefer to think of one putting his beak through a native's skull in a epic fight for life against spear-wielding aboriginals... I'm just not so sure that's how it went down. More likely the Vouron Patra was driven to extinction by people raiding their nests. The eggs and egg shells were both very important items to the tribal Malagasy, who used them for food and all kinds of stuff.

The fossil record shows that maximus was not the only species of Aepyornis that ever lived. It is thought that between three and seven different types of Elephant Bird have lived since the Pleistocene although only one, the smaller Aepyornis mullerornis is thought to have survived into historic times along with the Elephant Bird.

Only the giant is known to have co-existed with humans, and by 1700, it too was gone. I wish we knew more about it. I'm sure it was an impressive animal. Chickens scare me...I can't even begin to imagine a ten foot bird walking through the forest...bobbing its head...-S.