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:
“Once a child has demonstrated his capacity for independent functioning in any area, his lapses into dependent behavior, even though temporary, make the mother feel that she is being taken advantage of....What only yesterday was a description of the child’s stage in life has become an indictment, a judgment.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“A sound mind in a sound body, is a short, but full description of a happy state in this World: he that has these two, has little more to wish for; and he that wants either of them, will be little the better for anything else.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)
“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)