And flight, of course, is a means of escape. It’s a survival mechanism, and one that the birds of New Zealand found they didn’t especially need. Flying is hard work and consumes a lot of energy. Not only that. There is also a trade-off between flying and eating. The more you eat, the harder it is to fly. So increasingly what happened was that instead of having just a light snack and then flying off, the birds would settle in for a rather larger meal and go for a waddle afterward instead. So when eventually European settlers arrived and brought cats and dogs and stoats and possums with them, a
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