Steve Brusatte

And that is if you could eat seeds, because long after trees die, seeds will be left in the soil.

And so if you could eat seeds, you would have a source of food when pretty much everything else was gone.

And what could eat seeds really well?

Well, those birds that had beaks instead of teeth.

Some of the most terrifying animals, I think, to ever live were the terror birds.

Their name, I think, says it all.

These were birds that were taller than a human.

They had a head the size of a horse's head, but at the end was this very pointy, very sharp beak

which they use for slicing flesh.

They had tiny, piddly little wings.

They were too big to fly.

They were top predators.

They were the top predators in South America for many tens of millions of years.

Then there were also giant birds that maybe have ferocious names, but were not actually that

ferocious.

And one prime example were the demon ducks.

You think, oh my God, the demon ducks.

These are something out of, yeah, the portal of hell.

But no, they're called demon ducks because they were huge.

Maybe the heaviest birds that have ever lived.