--- On Mon, 10/12/09, Anastasia Dalziell <> wrote:
> No relationship between the two!
OK, not genetic then.
> The closest relative of the lyrebirds are the scrub birds.
> And yes, lyrebirds are very unusual for a passerine and
> continue to cause taxonomic confusion (the troublesome
> birds!).
Then it seems to me that it's a bit of convergent evolution. Granted, the
features are superficial, but it seems to me that the size of the bird and
particularly the display with the tail are similar. There could be other
aspects such as feeding habits, what part of a forest it feeds in, what it
feeds on. Of course I've never seen peacocks in the wild. Where the peacock
went for a riot of colour, the lyrebird went for complex song.
I'm thinking of convergent in a similar way to the thylacine and perhaps the
fox. Very different animals genetically, but superficially similar because of
similarities in their ecological niche. I was going to compare the thylacine
to a wolf, but wolves are pack animals and I've never heard of thylacines being
anything other than loners.
Rob
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