A giant possibly never existed

 The legend of the giant Mauritius rail

  The island of Mauritius, is a small island located in the Indian Ocean a few kilometers from the island of Madagascar, it is well known for several reasons, among them having been home to the extinct dodo, which is, without a doubt, the most famous extinct bird that has ever existed.

But in addition to the dodo, there was a possible giant-sized bird living in the swamps of the island. Let's look at the enigma of Leguatia Gigantea.

The mysterious bird of the swamp.

Leguatia Gigantea is the name given to a mysterious large bird, described by Hugenot François Leguat during his exile on the island of Mauritius during the 1690s. 

According to Leguat, it was about 1.8 meters tall, had a long neck and legs, and its plumage was almost completely white except for a red spot under the wing associated with swampy places, it had a body morphologically the same as the goose and a beak equal to theirs, only longer and more pointed, The toes were long and spread apart, and a beak similar to that of a goose, it was capable of flying, despite its size.. 

Leguat published an illustration: this represents the leguantia as a huge, long-fingered bird, like no other known to science, He is shown standing right next to a tree, which does a good job of emphasizing his size.

Despite its controversy over being described by an anecdote, Leguat's description was accepted as a valid and reliable description of a species hitherto unknown by several authors, The German ornithologist Hermann Schlegel first gave it a scientific name in 1857, Schlegel's thought, based on Leguat's description of the feet, beak, the habitat and general shape of this bird, which must be a gallinule and therefore a member of the family Rallidae.

Thus, this was cited in several books on extinct animals and has been accepted as a valid entity, for example Balouet & Alibert (1990), but others have not: It is not even mentioned in David Day's fairly comprehensive The Encyclopedia of Vanished Species (1981). 

But did it really exist?

     There have been doubts about the very existence of this bird, although the best statement has been made by extinct birds where it was strongly suggested that, While Leguat was apparently reliable in his observations, we should really doubt the reliability of these specifically. Could it have been a mistake? Could Leguat have seen some other bird and simply described it wrong?

There have been several theories that perhaps they could have been flamingos that recently became extinct in Mauritius, a confusion with other birds oh even a new species with insular gigantism.

As an extra, it is also believed that it could have been a copy of a much older illustration of a bird (an unidentified one, but presumably a rallid of some kind) published by Adriaan Collaert in his Avium Vivae Icones of the late 16th century. 

 

The collaert bird has no connection to Mauritius at all, it is not intended to represent a super white Rallidae, and anyway it is not drawn as if it were that large (compare it with the adjacent scoters whose appearance emphasizes the irrelevance Colleart's illustration has to the birds of Mauritius)

But anyway, the last word is yours, do you think that a giant species of Rallidae has lived in Mauritius? Oh, it's just an illusion made by the imagination of an exile, I'll leave you to your discretion.

[Reading links]

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/the-enigma-of-leguatia-6-foot-tall-mauritian-super-rail/