Planet of the Aves: Quadrabirds
In the world I am designing, instead of mammals, birds are the dominant species. In this world, replacing the niche of deer gazelle and cattle are a group of animals known as Quadrabirds. These are similar to flightless birds but with the their wings turning into a type of walking limb, hence their namesake.
What I am wondering is how such an animal would evolve? My current thoughts are related to the fingered bird, The Hoatzin.
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Your quadrabirds don't have to loose flight to have a walking fore-limb. Another answer already mentions that some groups of pterosaurs folded their wings when on the ground and used them for walking. There is an excellent article about this terrestrial locomotion at pterosaur.net, which includes some nice sketches. (I've said it before on wb.se. Are you folks not getting this yet? Modern literature needs more quetzalcoatlus.)
There is also a living species showing an example of convergent adaptation, the New Zealand Lesser Short Tailed Bat, (Mystacina tuberculata). In this case, it is not hard to find videos of their walking pattern, so you can actually study the mechanics of it while designing the quadrabird.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/a/51638. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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