Birds
About 280 species of bird have been recorded on Madagascar and about 200 of these breed. Although these are relatively low numbers for a large tropical island, there is a high degree of endemism. Over 100 bird species are endemic and 49 of these are restricted-range endemics with a range of less than 50,000 km2. There are five bird families unique to Madagascar or shared only with the Comoro Islands: the mesites, the ground-rollers, the cuckoo-roller, the asities and the vangas. In addition, recent studies suggest that several songbirds should be grouped together in a new endemic family: the Malagasy warblers.
Elephant Birds (Aepyornis maximus): These enormous birds were over 3 meters tall and half a tonne in weight. They are thought to have become extinct within the last millennium, as a result of human activity, like the dodo on the neighbouring island of Mauritius.
Read more about this topic: Fauna Of Madagascar
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—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
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