Shoebills are Metal

this episode was brought to you by Skillshare when you see a shoe bill you might think that they look like dinosaurs and the awesome thing is they actually are dinosaurs hi I'm Danielle and you're watching Animal Logic shoe bills like all birds are modern dinosaurs within the clade AV alley in Dinosauria but more so than other birds shoe bills really look the part they get their name from they're almost comically oversized shoe like bill the rest of their body is also really strange looking like a hodgepodge of different creatures they have very ostrich or cassowary like legs a stork like body and a squarish head that looks like it might belong on a dollar bird but with the Flair of a mandarin duck and they're called well the word jackhammer comes to mind shoe bills are the only member of their genus and the only other members of their family are hammer cops they are also super weird looking and are named as such because they're essentially hammerhead birds well people often call shoe bills Shoebill stork s' they're actually more closely related to herons ibises and pelicans and they're only confirmed ancestor is galicia a giant bird who measured over two meters tall shoe bills are endemic to eastern africa and live in swamps from sudan to zambia though some vagrants have been spotted as far west as the congo river shoo bills are quite large adults can reach well over a metre in height and the tallest one ever found measured a hundred and fifty two centimetres tall about up to here in order to carry their large bodies they have huge wings measuring from 230 to 260 centimetres wide LeBron James for comparison has an arm span of 218 centimetres quite a bit less than an adult shoe bill these massive wings are great for soaring and because of their large size they flap their wings much slower than most other species of bird only flapping them about 150 times a minute despite their large stature they only weigh between 4 and 7 kilos a testament to their light hollow bones their massive shoe bill is the third longest in the animal kingdom ranking after Starks and pelicans but their bill is much larger it has a bigger circumference than any other bird they may look clunky but their bills are deadly effective tools the edges of their bills are razor sharp which is helpful as they often will decapitate their prey when hunting they'll also use their sharpened bill to mow down grass to expose prey if you look closely you'll notice their bill isn't entirely rounded and their upper mandible forms a very sharp nail at the end they use this to stab and impale their prey wicked they also have very large feet and their middle toe can be up to 18 centimetres long this helps a lot when you live in the swamp and spend hours of the day completely still perched on floating debris waiting for prey shoe bills are very solitary and spend their days looking for muddy swamps with mixed vegetation and then they stand around and wait for prey to swim by their prey of choice lungfish & Bashir these two species are particularly interesting because both can breathe outside of the water they use their ability to get away from predators chasing them underwater a strategy which is altogether ruined by a lurking shoe bill while lungfish and Beshear may be their most common meal shoe bills are hardly specialists and will eat anything that they can get their bill around including frogs snakes lizards and young crocodiles metal while their main strategy is to find a location where fish is plentiful and then wait they have been known to hunt in areas preyed upon by hippos as hippos will scare the fish and force them to surface easy pickings for Shoebill the whiff of fish refuses to surface shoe bills will use their bill to dig them out of any burrows they might be hiding in if you couldn't guess these constantly pissed looking birds are very territorial when it comes to nesting they nest very far from other shoe bills and will fight any competing shoe Bill's and predators like crocodiles that get too close shoe bills are monogamous which is adorable but they're not great parents after their eggs hatch they tend to only raise the strongest baby leaving the others to perish Highlander rules you know the babies start fighting each other very early on to be selected as the chosen one shoe bills reach sexual maturity at age three and can live over thirty years in the wild between 50 and 80 percent of their population can be found in South Sudan with around 5,000 of them living there they are listed as vulnerable and their numbers are declining due to hunting habitat destruction and capture for the zoo trade they're amazing jackhammer sound is one of the few sounds that they produce and they use it to communicate greetings and threats but with shoe bills the greetings are usually pretty threatening while shoe bill certainly stand out from the pack not all birds are so easy to identify if you're interested in learning more about how to identify different bird species in the wild a good place to start is with a course on Skillshare the casual birder taught by Sue Pulsifer offers you an introduction to bird identification in the course she will guide you through the process of easily identifying all kinds of birds in your backyard when you're on a hike or when you're traveling abroad being able to identify the different species of birds that surround us can really help us feel more connected to the natural world and it will certainly make your next hike more interesting Skillshare is an online learning community with over 20,000 courses you can learn everything from bird-watching to wildlife photography to how to realistically draw animals skill shares premium feature gives you unlimited access to all of their high-quality courses which is great because having all of these subjects at your fingertips really makes learning something new really easy and accessible you just click the subject you want to check out and you're already learning if you want to support Animal Logic and learn something cool on Skillshare follow the link in the description and sign up for two months of skills for free so what animal should I check out next quick let me know in the comments and be sure to subscribe for new episodes of animal logic every other week thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Animalogic

Views: 2,693,655

Rating: 4.7442079 out of 5

Keywords: animals, animal, logic, education, show, animalogic, crazy, ugly, weird, gross, beautiful, interesting, facts, animalsfacts, about, information, info, school, research, learn, learning, fun, easy, smart, metal, shoebill, stork, fish, eat, hunt, swamp, dinosaur, living, ancient, dinosaurs, shoe, bill, heron

Id: BMXNRFxjHfs

Length: 6min 51sec (411 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/cre8ngjoy]

That was fun!

[u/ClementineChime]

I finally got around to watching this. Pretty good overview of the shoobs. Nice to see it got so many views!