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:
“God damnit, why must all those journalists be such sticklers for detail? Why, they’d hold you to an accurate description of the first time you ever made love, expecting you to remember the color of the room and the shape of the windows.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“It [Egypt] has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”
—Herodotus (c. 484–424 B.C.)
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)