In popular culture, a hippogriff is depicted to have an eagle’s upper body and a horse’s lower body. Said to be the offspring of a mare and a griffin (a creature which has an eagle’s upper half body and a lion’s for the lower part), this proud creature moves very swiftly and flies great heights. However, when science is taken into account, we will see that several notions of its incredible features can only be made possible through magic.
Flight, for instance, is improbable due to the large size of the hippogriff. Adults can weigh more than 600 Kg and grow at an average of 11 ft long. Because gravity will exert greater force on this large mass, a hippogriff would need extremely huge wings to be able to fly. Unfortunately, bigger wings mean additional weight, making flight…show more content… The evolutionary adaptations of the hippogriff will be discussed throughout this guide, along with its taxonomy, ecology, and anatomy.
taxonomy
The Phorusrhacidae is a large flightless bird that existed until 2 million years ago. It used its hooked beak for smashing the prey’s body on the ground repeatedly and tearing its flesh from the body. Thus, it is a carnivorous terror bird. Most phorusrhacids can run at very fast speeds of about 45 km per hour (“Terror birds,” n.d.). It is the ancestor of today’s eagle, seriema (Degrange, et al., 2010) and the hippogriff.
Since their skull is only capable of resisting force vertically and incapable of resisting sideways motion which brings damage to their skull and throws them off balance (“Terror birds,” n.d.), those phorusrhacids with longer wings survived longer than those with shorter ones, since the long length allowed more ability to carry the upper body when they lower it so that the claws on their wings can reach and have a tight grip on the ground. This motion kept them from being thrown off balance. Later on, the wings grew into limbs that are as long