adjective
definition
Unable to fly. Usually used with birds such as the penguin, ostrich, and emu.
Examples of flightless in a Sentence
Flightless, wings transformed into rowing paddles.
Dididae, flightless, recently extinct.
A diagnosis covering all the Ratitae (struthio, rhea, casuarius, dromaeus, apteryx and the allied fossils dinornis and aepyornis) would be as follows - (i) terrestrial birds without keel to the sternum, absolutely flightless; (ii) quadrate bone with a single proximal articulating knob; (iii) coracoid and scapula fused together and forming an open angle; (iv) normally without a pygostyle; (v) with an incisura ischiadica; (vi) rhamphotheca compound; (vii) without apteria or bare spaces in the plumage; (viii) with a complete copulatory organ, moved by skeletal muscles.
We also had really close views of flightless cormorants.
Bones will reveal life of dodo - 26/06/2006 Well-preserved bones of the extinct flightless dodo bird are uncovered in Mauritius.
Many of these birds, to judge from the enormous size of their hind-limbs, were undoubtedly flightless, e.g.
New Zealand has also yielded many flightless birds, notably the numerous species and genera of Dinornithidae, some of which survived into the 19th century; Pseudapteryx allied to the Kiwi; Cnemiornis, a big, flightless goose; Aptornis and Notornis, flightless rails; and Harpagornis, a truly gigantic bird of prey with tremendous wings and talons.
Aphanapteryx (Mauritius) = Erythromachus (Rodriguez) = Diaphorapteryx (Chatham Island), flightless and recently extinct.
They have spread widely, and have not confined their depredations to the rabbits, so that the indigenous flightless birds have suffered largely.
How did the flightless dodos get back to Mauritius?
More than a quarter of all the world's 60-odd living species of rail are flightless, and all flightless rails live on islands.
New Zealand has also yielded many flightless birds, notably the numerous species and genera of Dinornithidae, some of which survived into the 19th century (see M0A); Pseudapteryx allied to the Kiwi; Cnemiornis, a big, flightless goose; Aptornis and Notornis, flightless rails; and Harpagornis, a truly gigantic bird of prey with tremendous wings and talons.
This genus was already typically developed in late Miocene times, and with a very wide geographical distribution (see Bird, Fossil), but of the affinities of the other midand early tertiary flightless birds we know nothing, and it must be emphasized that we should probably not be able to classify a truly ancestral Ratite, namely, a bird which is still to a certain extent carinate and not yet ratite.
From flightless ratite birds native to Australia and now factory farmed.
Starting with the kiwi and cassowary, people have got into the habit of confounding flightless with wingless conditions.
A large flightless goose, Cnemiornis, allied to the Australian Cereopsis, and the gigantic rapacious Harpagornis, have died out recently, with the moas.