Tallest crane

The tallest species of crane is the sarus crane (Antigone antigone), which stands up to 1.8 metres (5 feet 9 inches) tall. Native to the Indian subcontinent (most notably India), southeastern Asia and Australia, it is able to fly despite its great size but is non-migratory, and inhabits marshes and other wetlands, where it feeds upon small vertebrates, arthropods and plant material such as tubers and roots.

Although cranes do wade, taxonomically speaking they belong to the order Gruiformes and therefore are not true waders – a term zoologically applied to sandpipers, curlews, plovers, snipes and other related birds belonging to an entirely separate taxonomic order, Charadriiformes.

Some researchers have proposed that the sarus crane's three subspecies are sufficiently distinct to warrant reclassification as separate species in their own right, but genetic studies tend not to support this. However, as a single species it is sometimes placed in a separate genus, Antigone, distinct from the so-called true cranes in Grus.