Bird Spotlight: The Zu, Final Fantasy XV
The Zu is one of the many bird-like creatures in the final fantasy universe. In most depictions it is a darkly colored, aggressive bird with prominent teeth. Here. shining a spotlight on the Zu to talk about its similarity to several real-world species, both past and present.
Part 1: Specificity
To start off, lets look at the bird’s real-world counterparts. The Zu’s overall body plan is undeniably vulturine, with its heavy barrel shaped body and long (mostly) naked neck. But its specific classification managed to surprise me.
On a cursory view, I has believed that the Zu took sole inspiration from Andean Condors, due to their similar color scheme and vulturine appearance. But on closer inspection, the Zu actually bears a far greater physical resemblance to Old World Vultures.
That iconic white ruff around the Zu’s neck was the first feature that drew my eye. It has a remarkable similarity to the Andean Condor’s white ruff. Especially when paired with the black covert feathers, but that is where the similarities end. The Zu has major features that point me into another direction, the Feet and the Pants.
The Zu’s feet are undeniably Acciptridae, a clade which includes Eagles, Hawks and old world Vultures. The toes are thick, and the talons curve sharply upwards before coming down to a deadly point.
New world vultures(Cathartidae), on the other hand, have what is affectionately refereed to as chicken feet, with relatively smaller and weaker toes and talons. These birds have a far weaker grip strength and are less likely to attack with their feet(this is personal experience lmao). In the FFXV, one of the Zu’s main attacks is stomping.
The next feature, just above those big ol’ stompy feet is the Pants. The Zu’s bright, showy and stylish outfit choice is another feature missing from the new world vultures group. And when we look over to the old world vultures, this type of downy leg coverings are found only in the subfamily Aegypiinae, such as the Lappet-faced Vulture(Torgos tracheliotos).
Assuming that the Zu's design comes from a specific clade(aka an Andean Condor's ruff wasn't pasted onto an an old world vulture) we could narrow the classification down further. The Zu’s white ruff then indicates that the Zu likely belongs to genus Gyps, with its real world cousins including species such as the Eurasian Griffin Vulture(Gyps fulvus).
So yeah, African Vulture Supremacy(I still love condors I promise)
Part 2: Fantasticality
Moving on from the real, I would also like to point out several parts of the Zu’s design that, while completely fictitious, are still pretty damn cool.
For one, the body proportions. One of the things common bird-like monster design(that hurts my poor birdbrain) is the sheer impracticality of wingspan. The FFXV Zu? is Gorgeous. The wingspan is absolutely massive, around 4x its basic body length, which matches perfectly to the wingspan of its real world counterparts.
Speaking of that second set of wings, they may have an important function. The Zu’s teeth also bear a striking resemblance to extinct Pelagornis a genus of prehistoric pseudo-toothed birds. The reason that birds initially lost their teeth, despite their use for holding on to slippery prey, is because teeth are heavy. So, if the Zu had some vital function that prevented it from loosing its teeth a second set of wings to help hold up that burden while in flight could be a necessary trade off.
The final trait I would like to mention in this spotlight is wing shape, because the Zu actually has two distinctive wing shapes on its two sets of wings. The upper set are a basic long-distance soaring shape common to vultures, but the second set appear to be a mix between the shapes for soaring such as the Ruppell's Vulture(Gyps rueppelli)and the high-speed sustained flight shape common for migratory sea-birds, such as the Magnificent Frigatebird(Fregata magnificens).
I was not able to track down a species with wings quite like them, but I would love input from if anyone has a guess.
That about wraps up this spotlight, it ended up waay longer than i intended :p.
I plan to do several more spotlights for various fictional birds from all sorts of media, so come and follow if you would like to see them. I will be tagging this series #spotlights as well #bfw(my general works tag).
If anyone has any good medias for me to look at birds in, send me an ask! I would love to hear about them!
Photo Credits in order
Andean Condor: Mason Maron - Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML421687901) Bald Eagle: Ian Davies - Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML31692591) Black Vulture: Enrique Mejía - Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML617197078 ) Lappet-faced Vulture: Roland Bischoff - Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML204748881) Eurasian Griffon Vulture: Richard Bartz - Wikimedia Commons (File:Gyps_fulvus_Richard_Bartz.jpg) Ruppell's Griffon Vulture: José A Cortés Guerrero - Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML618960228) Pelgaornis sp.: Peter Trusler - National Geographic (truth-of-the-pelagornis-pseudotooth) Magnificent Frigatebird: Connor Cochrane - Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology (ML436416971)
To find most of these photos at the source you can go to macaulaylibrary.org/asset/[insert ML# here]
