Whose feet? What did you notice?
| What | Why? |
| Long front toes and tiny, raised back toe | Cranes never sit in trees, so they don’t need a long back toe to help them hang onto a branch. And if the toe was lower or longer, it might get muddy and slow the crane's movements. The toes are long enough to balance and support the crane's body on squishy mud. |
| Relatively short, thick claws | Cranes don’t
use their feet for defense or for capturing or carrying prey, so they don’t need long, sharp, curved claws like hawk's have on their talons. And cranes don’t perch in trees, so they don't need sharp claws like songbirds have for gripping branches. |
| Webbing between toes | The small webbing helps them stand in squishy mud and also when moving in water. (The placement of the webbing and the lack of FWS band are clues that it is the left foot.) |
| Scaled, but fairly smooth, skin around the toes and lower legs | Such skin leaves no crevices where parasites or germs could collect. |
Image: Eva Szyszkoski