Giant, Hobbit-Eating Stork Discovered

12/14/2010

Scientists have discovered fossils of a giant, hobbit-eating stork.  This is definitely one of the oddest ledes I've had the pleasure of writing for this blog.  Here's the explanation.

This odd story started several years ago, when fossils of a previously unknown human species were discovered by paleoanthropologists on the island of Flores in Indonesia.  They gave the new species the official name Homo floresiensis.  At the time, the Lord of the Rings film trilogy was at the height of its popularity, and that, along with the diminutive size of this new human (roughly one meter tall) resulted in the nickname for the species: hobbits.

Fascinatingly, these tiny humans coexisted with modern humans (Homo sapiens) on Flores for thousands of years.  Some theories suggest that it was competition with the larger H. sapiens that ultimately spelled the doom of H. floresiensis.  Now, another bizarre discovery adds a new potential threat to the hobbits, this one in the form of a giant, predatory stork.

Named Leptoptilos robustus, this newly discovered stork was similar to a modern-day marabou stork except it stood at a height of almost two meters.  Based on the predatory behavior of the living marabou stork, some scientist have suggested the possibility that this giant stork hunted and fed upon young hobbits. (You can see an illustration comparing the size of the stork compared to a H. floresiensis here.)

J.R.R. Tolkien dreamt up ringwraiths, warg riding orcs, Gollum, and other nasties to hunt his hobbits, but it's sure he never thought of this!

VIDEO: Check a modern-day marabou stork in action.  Watch out, Frodo!

 Marabou stork photo by dbarronoss via Flickr.

 

Comments

[Aimee]

Wow! This is just amazing, who knew?! I would love to have seen Flores back in it's heyday!

[Julian Teodoro]

I don't believe that just because the bird is a predator and because there are humans that are around three feet tall..that these birds fed on these little humans.
Being humans..we have an advantage..we always will..we have weapons..if anything the stork would more likely be the prey or food item.Ostriches are nine feet tall..alot taller than these six foot tall
storks and we eat them and emus..we even raise them for food.

[Jenn]

To Julian:

True of the Ostrich and the Emu, but neither of them have sharp pointy beaks they could us to jab something and kill it. I doubt that they caused these small humans to go extinct, but I'm sure that if a bird like that were hungry enough, or felt threatened, it could take down a human, hobbit size or not, if that human did not have a weapon or a head start.

[David Mizejewski]

@Jenn is correct that one of the big differences between storks and ostriches or emus is that storks are predatory and carnivorous. Ostriches and emus are omnivores and do eat some animal matter, but it's mostly insects and tiny vertebrates.

Humans, even with our technology, weapons and large brains, don't ALWAYS have the advantage. Beyond our brains and technology, we're pretty ill-equipped to fight or flee other living things or survive in the wilderness for any length of time (at least those of us living in modern urban environments). Other animals clearly have the advantage over humans in those scenarios.

The size of a young H. floresiensis would be well within the size of the normal prey items of this giant stork, and if caught alone, without the protection of adults, it's possible that a juvenile could be killed and eaten by this bird. Of course this is just a theory that, however plausible, needs a lot more evidence to prove it.

@Julian, you might be interested to read another blog post I've written about other bird species that fed on people: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-mizejewski/animal-oddities-birds-tha_b_797815.html

[clarence turpin]

I think that It would be safe to assumed that a bird like this could have well given the people back then major grief.And cause them to lived In fear too.

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What an amazing creature.