I’m seeing some confusion about this one in the reblogs, and it is for my money one of the most interesting things to know about birds, so:
The big guy in this picture is the cuckoo – a young cuckoo. The little one is the momma bird, who is feeding the baby, even though the baby is now like five times as big as she is. That’s because the cuckoo is a brood parasite.
Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. If the hosts notice the cuckoo egg, they will try to get rid of it – if they don’t, though, and the cuckoo chick hatches, they will raise it as their own, even though the first thing it does when it hatches is to murder all of their other children.
The question with this is always: why, at that point, do the host birds raise the cuckoo chick? It’s way too hungry, it’s way too aggressive, it hangs around way longer than a normal chick would, and it’s huge, for god’s sake. It’s obviously not theirs. There are a couple of theories. One is that the begging call a baby cuckoo makes sounds like an entire nest of normal chicks, and the parents are programmed to feed whatever makes that noise. I got some doubts about behavior models that are that deterministic, though. I like to think it’s some avian variation on the sunk cost fallacy – the parents put all these resources into making this nest and laying this clutch, and by god they’re going to get a baby out of it, even if it’s a giant monster baby.
There is absolutely zero science behind this but my impression has always been that the parasitized parents, upon raising a gargantuan monster child, are basically just thrilled to pieces, like, “fuck yeah my huge Gundam kid can beat up your honor student” and “gaze upon my feathered monster truck pride and joy and despair”.
There are plenty of parent birds who end up booting the brood parasite when they see something is ‘off’ with their offspringl. Then again, there are plenty of parent birds who boot their own brood as well so take that with a grain of salt as to whether it recognizes the impostor or not.
To my understanding raising the impostor can be a mix of strong hormonal parenting urges (which helps parents of any species ‘adopt’ another even if they aren’t their biological progeny) and a sunk cost fallacy. Some birds are just super good parents and have the right urge and instinct to parent and raise chicks regardless of how they turn out. (Others are terrible parents who may not end up passing their genes to a new generation because they keep killing the beebs for a variety of reasons).
Though the worst part about brood parasites isn’t so much that they take more resources away from the other chicks but they often push out any remaining eggs or chicks from the nest until they are the only one for the parents to focus on.
Back to the Gouldian post from awhile back, some theorize that their shiny little mouth orbs serve not only to help the parents find their mouths in the dark nests, but also because brood parasites had been a problem as the species developed and the shiny orbs help the parents only feed their own.
Either way this is a fascinating topic to look into.
You always see list of deadliest toxins, but almost never lists of least fun toxins. I mean, a bite from a taipan snake will kill you dead, but in a brisk and orderly fashion that will unfold from “Ow, bugger, what was that” to “x_x” in about an hour.
The reaction to the gympie gympie stinging tree, however, can last for months, during which time there is precious little they can do for you except pump you full of steroids and strap you down to a table with a brace in your mouth so you don’t do yourself serious injury. In the 1960s, British military scientists studied the tree for its potential as a biological weapon.
The research was apparently abandoned, for reasons which have never been released to the public; but if I had to take a guess, I’d look to the example of civilian research scientist Marina Hurley, who spent three years studying the gympie gympie, and was forced to abandon her research when, despite using every manner of precaution, her exposure to the plant’s neurotoxin nevertheless led to hospitalization. The hairs on the plant which carry the toxin, you see, are regularly shed, and become airborne, at which point they can be inhaled and cause severe nosebleeds, asphyxiation, and anaphylactic shock.
One survivor of a brush with a gympie gympie described the stinging persisting for over two years, made worse whenever he took a cold shower.
That one thing we’re notably good at as a species finally has a use that will benefit mankind (and more)
Yes, humanity
We are the ones that will drive the gympie gympie to extinction
Yes that plant may well be the one thing stopping Australia from being overrun by venomous spider-wasp-scorpion-bears, but that is a fate far preferable to continuing to share a planet with the gympie gympie
No, we might need it for when we’re attacked by aliens
Even better – it continues to shed the hairs even after it’s dead.
A master of disguise, the pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti) grows to only 2 cm in length and matches the gorgonian coral that it lives on. The pygmy seahorse is so successful at hiding that it was not discovered until its home was being studied in a lab.
I was showing a friend videos of normal snow leopard locomotion last night (read: their interaction with the laws of physics looks like it came straight out of a cartoon) and I found this incredible video of how that agility and strength benefit them in the wild.
The actual video of the chase starts at around 2:10 (before that there’s a lot of really gorgeous footage of the snow leopards and the goats on their own) and it’s incredible to watch an animal race across steep, rocky terrain with such grace. It’s also worth noting how effective a snow leopard’s pattern is at camouflaging them on the mountainous backdrop.
(CW: minor animal injury – the goat gets bitten, but there is no visible blood).
“their interaction with the laws of physics looks like it came straight out of a cartoon”
But doesn’t that describe pretty much every feline? XD
Yes, but:
(Gif made from CMZ’s video of their male snow leopard, Bhutan).
that’s his eyeballs poppin’ into his mouth to squeeze his food down
Frogs have so much mouth that their head doesn’t have any room for both eyeball-controlling muscles and swallowing muscles, so their eyeball muscles have to double as both. Seems to be working pretty well for them so far.
This kid hopped right into my shoe and proceeded to angrily sing to me when I picked it up.
I have never met such a talkative toad! Usually they just pee on me.
When a male toad is held a certain way they chirp. Why? Because it’s hard for toads to determine the sex of other toads. So if a male is mounted by another male, he chirps to alert him to the fact that babies will not be resulting from this, Uh. Encounter.
Basically that toad is telling you “listen I’m not gonna jump to get away but you should know I contain zero (0) eggs”
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