Check out the Wing Claws on this Chick!!

[crazy chook]

**UPDATE**

So this little chick is now nearly 4 weeks old and is just gorgeous!

She (hopefully she) has grown into those extra long wing feathers and her wind claws have not grown

. They are still there under the feather tufts but are tiny now compared to her size.

She really is a sweet little chick and hopefully if she is a she I will be keeping her.

 

[crazy chook]

She looked prehistoric when she was a week old but now is very much like her frizzled hatch mates and has grown into her wings so to speak!.

 

[bald k9]

What a cutie!!!

 

[sciencechick]

The wing claws seem a prehistoric relic. It was found on the first prehistoric bird/dinosaur Archeopterix.
But they still exist in modern birds.
The Hoatzin (a strange South American birds that is either truly primitive or an evolutionary throwback), has two wing claws on each wing as a chick and uses them to climb around in the tree branches, before it can fly. Here's an article about them: http://www.lastrefuge.co.uk/data/articles/hoatzin_p1.html

In most modern birds, they don't have a function anymore, but you do find the occasional one. Kind of like people having a third nipple, a bit of tail or something like that. A reminder of the past.
I have found the claw on a few grown chickens at slaughter before, mostly on Marans.

 

[tinychicky]

cool! i want to see pics of the bird as an adult! i have a rooster with similar growths on the tips of his wings instead of the last flight feather.

 

[wegotchickens]

I found this thread while doing a bit of research into 'wing fingers'. I have a silkie that has them. The bird was already named Spike before they developed. The wing fingers were not there when Spike hatched, and then all the sudden there were these very obvious projections. I will see if I can get a picture tonight. S/he is a very friendly bird and I want to keep Spikely. If wing fingers aren't a super bad thing, then I'm happy. I can only keep breedable birds due to lack of space, and I

Spikely's color!!! The wing fingers are kinda cool but if they pass onto the other birds and are considered bad then I was gonna have to rehome Spike.

 

[sourland]

She's reverting back to her tree climbing dinosaur ancestors. Think Velociraptor:

 

[Mahonri]

I'd like to see update pics!

 

[HorizonSon]

Cuties of a chick! ;-)

Just don't understand the repeated reference to that joke of a religion and dinosaurs???

 

[gryeyes]

Quote:
I must have missed the "religion" reference. But it's not a JOKE about chickens being dinosaur descendents, at all.