Description
Rheas are large, flightless birds with gray-brown plumage, long legs and long necks, similar to an ostrich. Large males of R. americana can reach 1.70 metres (5.6 ft), and weigh up to 40 kilograms (88 lb), and their back can be 100 centimetres (39 in) tall. The Lesser Rhea is somewhat smaller as their back is only 90 centimetres (35 in) tall. Their wings are large for a flightless bird (250 centimetres (8.2 ft)) and are spread while running, to act like sails. Unlike most birds, rheas have only three toes. Their tarsus has 18 to 22 horizontal plates on the front of it. They also store urine separately in an expansion of the cloaca.
Read more about this topic: Rhea (bird)
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to- morrow you arrive there, and know them by inhabiting them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To give an accurate description of what has never occurred is not merely the proper occupation of the historian, but the inalienable privilege of any man of parts and culture.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“As they are not seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fishermen that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period; a tragic feature in the scenery of the river bottoms worthy to be remembered with Shakespeare’s description of the sea-floor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)