Curriculum links
Learning areas
Which strands will it fit with?
- Science - Planet Earth and Beyond, Living World.
- Social Studies - The Economic World.
Key Competencies
Thinking - Students will be challenged to imagine New Zealand in the time before human occupation.
Relating to others - Students may examine possible scenarios that lead to the extinction of both the moa and Harpagornis.
Levels of achievement
Levels 2-6
Year groups
Years 3-11
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Which topics of study can it support?
- New Zealand Environment
- New Zealand Society Past and Present
- Earth Science
How long might this take?
Allow 10 minutes.
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Where do I find it?
Why should I take my class to visit this?
- See the type of talons you need to attack a moa and penetrate through its flesh into its pelvic bone.
- See spectacular scale models of two extinct birds that roamed New Zealand about 600 years ago, about to fight, possibly until one of them dies.
- Get a feel for how gigantic the moa and Harpagornis eagles really were.
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What is there to do there?
- Stretch out your hand and compare its size and span to the moa’s foot.
- Look up and imagine the eagle landing on the back of your neck with the weight of a 12kg rock dropped from the top of Te Papa.
- Look at the skeletons in the nearby cases in Awesome Forces on Level 2, especially the moa pelvis with the talons of an eagle still embedded in it.
- Explore the nearby areas in Awesome Forces and discover how New Zealand was a bird’s paradise before people arrived.
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What should I know about this?
- The Harpagornis eagle was the largest eagle ever to have lived and is the only eagle in the world to have been top predator of its ecosystem. The females were larger than the males, having a wingspan of up to 2.6m. Because of its large size, the Harpagornis eagle was approaching the limit of size for flapping flight - if it had got any bigger it would have had to rely on gliding. The eagle preyed upon flightless birds weighing between 1kg and 200kg, in particular, the now extinct moa. It was thought to have been extinct by about 1400AD, although there were reported sightings in the nineteenth century.
- Moa were a large flightless bird only found in New Zealand whose distant relations were the ostrich and the emu. There were eleven different species of moa; the moa in the Awesome Forces exhibition is the giant moa. It is commonly believed that most moa grew up to four metres tall, however, some species were turkey-size. Recent research suggests that all moa were extinct within about fifty years of Māori colonisation of New Zealand due to the clearance of land and hunting.
Possible topics for discussion
- Who do you think is going to win this fight? Why? (Most probably the Harpagornis eagle - it would launch itself from a high perch onto its prey and strike at the moa’s side. Its large talons grasped the hindquarters of the moa and killed it by inflicting deep crushing wounds that caused massive internal bleeding. The moa died from shock or blood loss.)
- What was New Zealand like before people arrived? When did the first people arrive, and who were they? What impact did their arrival have on some of the birds of New Zealand?
- How do we know what this type of moa and eagle looked like? (Moa bones have been discovered all over New Zealand, in particular, in the South Island. Pictures of the Harpagornis eagle have also been found in rock paintings drawn in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries - not long after Polynesians first discovered New Zealand.)
- What protective measures could moa take to try and escape from predators like the Harpagornis eagle? (Maybe the moa could have kept still to avoid detection or camouflaged itself against the bark of a giant tree.)
- Why did the moa become flightless? (The moa had a lack of predators in New Zealand so had no need for flight.)
- Why did the Harpagornis eagle become extinct when the moa did? (Once moa became extinct, the eagles’ main food source was gone, leading to their subsequent extinction.)
- Why were the nine species of moa different sizes? (The range in sizes of the moa was due to their environment, and the size of each moa depended on its suitability and ability to adapt to its particular environment.)
- How did the people who hunted it use the moa? (Meat for food; fat as a preservative for other foods; feathers and bones for decoration; bones could also be used to make tools such as drills and fish hooks.)
- The Harpagornis eagle was a very large bird; check out the size of its skull in the case next to the moa and Harpagornis eagle models in the Awesome Forces exhibition. From what you can see, how was the Harpagornis eagle adapted to being a predator?
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Further information
Related objects
- Go to the Bush City caves to see the moa bones in the moa pits.
- Visit NatureSpace Discovery Centre to check out the ‘Dead as a Dodo’ case to learn about other examples of animal and bird extinction; compare the shape and size of your foot to the moa’s foot print; check out the moa egg and see the difference in size to eggs from other birds; and on the three-dimensional timeline running down the north wall of NatureSpace, compare the size of the moa leg bone to the little leg bone of the dodo bird.
- Visit Blood, Earth, Fire on Level 3 to explore the communities of plants and animals that existed in Aotearoa shortly before people arrived. Meet the stout-legged moa, discover what it ate, and listen to what it may have sounded like.
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