Now Arthur wanting to be a Moa bird is as he would say Awesome. However, if he wanted to be even more impressive and scary,, instead of a Moa bird, he should become a terror bird. Heck even the name is terrifying. Saber tooth tigers were afraid of it thats how awesome it was.
Here is a you tube video about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1FD0HVUO10
There are a bunch of people here in New Zealand who are convinced that there are still a few Moa roaming in the wild west coast of the south island, unseen by men for over a hundred years.
As a kid we used to go the the local museum and they had a couple of replica Moa and the things were freaking huge. You could feed a family of 5 on one drumstick!
So here's my question: if Moa were such kickass birds, how did they ever lose? It's not like they couldn't run--have you seen the leg bones on fossils of these things? But the Maori whomped them into extinction, thus proving either that the Moa were wusses or the Maori weren't. Or, as Grampa Simpson would say, "A little of column A, and a little of column B."
Arthur needs to choose another species as a wannabe. A better choice would probably be cassowaries--which are NOT extinct and kick butt even today. Plus, unlike ducks, you can't really eat them. WikiArcana: Australian administrative officers stationed in New Guinea were advised that it "should be cooked with a stone in the pot: when the stone is ready to eat so is the Cassowary."
The Haast eagle used to eat the Moa, and early humans as well, apparently. It's talons were as strong as a tiger's and even longer. Moa have been found with talon marks and so have early human skulls. Haast eagles fossils have been found mostly on South Island. Ten foot wingspan and body weight assumed to have been around 30 pounds makes it a very savage predator fully capable of taking down both Moa and isolated humans. Haast eagles are probably the closet thing to dino Utah Raptors that humans ever encountered.
However, the Haast eagle may not have been the largest bird humans have ever seen fly. The Argentavis magnificens (the "Magnificent Teratorn from Argentina") had a wingspan up to nearly 30 feet and a body weight estimated at 175 pounds.
But, there is no hard evidence they ever encountered humans as it is believed they went extinct in the Pliocene, a few million years before humans entered the Americas. American Indian legends of the Thunderbird do present a tantalizing possibility that a small population survived into the Holocene to frighten and awe humans.
