The Coolest Birds on Earth | A SciShow Compilation

[Music] it's Thanksgiving time here in the US which means everyone is talking about turkeys which is why we here at scishow are not going to instead today's compilation features a bunch of other incredible birds from weird ones that smell like fruit to the kind of terrifying ones because once you start looking you'll find that there are a lot of amazing species out there but first up one pretty much all of us think we know well the humble pigeon though it turns out pigeons are a lot more interesting than you probably give them credit for here's a very young Hank to explain we all know the white dove is a symbol of peace and purity so what the pigeons symbolize dirt and disease well problem here pigeons and doves same thing just turns out one is a slightly better dress doves and pigeons are both members of the same family columbidae who's 308 species can be found pretty much any place on earth except Antarctica and they come in a variety of sizes and colors since the dodo disappeared yes Dodos were pigeons the turkey sized crowned pigeon is the biggest of the family while the sparrow sized a new world ground of is the smallest now you have most definitely seen some kind of pigeon in your life but did you know pigeons produce milk they don't lactate like mammals but they do produce a similar milk like substance to feed their chicks now if this sounds bizarre it's because it is all pigeons do it but they're joined only by flamingos and male emperor penguins in this ability crop milk is a fat and protein rich substance produced by both male and female pigeon parents the milky white stuff is churned up in the bird's crop or throat pouch usually used for food storage the crop changes in response to hormones when eggs hatch and like a memory gland enters a sort of lactation period pigeon milk contains tons of antioxidants and plays a key role in boosting a chick's immune system much like mammalian breast milk does also pigeons Bob there heads to see better lots of birds Bob their heads as they strut around looking like Mick Jagger and pigeons are no exception the head bobbing probably helps the birds stay balanced on their legs which spring out fairly far back behind their bodies but researchers think this kind of jiving has more to do with stabilizing their vision we humans can't stabilize our vision with our eyeballs they stay in the same place when I move my head around and unless we're really feeling the dr.dre we don't need to Bob our heads while we walk but pigeons have a harder time multitasking in a busy world it's easier to observe a moving object when your head is still so when a pigeon Bob's its head it's actually holding its head in place temporarily while its body moves and then thrusts its head forward again this keeps the head stable for as long as possible so the pigeon can keep an eye out for a squirmy insects or swooping high we know this because in the late 1970s creative ornithologist Barry frost put some pigeons on a treadmill to see what happened and in the controlled surroundings of the lab with no bugs or birds or prey to watch out for the birds heads didn't Bob third thing pigeons are decorated war heroes with excellent hearing people have been using homing pigeons to deliver messages for centuries Persian kings used them Julius Caesar used them and in World War one soldiers on the front used them to relay hundreds of thousands of messages one famous flyer named share on me single wing idli saved a battalion of 600 trapped French soldiers flying home with a missing eye a bullet and it's breast and a leg dangling by a thread cher eventually healed and was awarded with the prestigious Service Cross when he finally died years later he was stuffed and mounted and now resides at the Smithsonian Institution humans have never quite understood homing pigeons ability to find their way home across large distances but a recent theory may have solved the mystery USGS researcher Jonathan Hagstrom believes that the birds use low-frequency sound waves to create a sort of acoustic map by which to navigate home pigeons can hear down to the faintest of infrasound noises down to even about 0.1 Hertz whereas even under the best laboratory conditions humans can't hope to hear under 12 Hertz backstrom got the idea that the birds used sound frequencies when he noticed raising pigeons going astray whenever the supersonic Concorde jet was flying nearby the Jets sonic interference was disorienting the pigeons weather landscape and atmospheric changes can also lead the birds astray so yeah pigeons turns out they're pretty rads be nice looks like I need to give pigeons a bit more credit though if we're gonna give them credit for awesome hearing this next bird should get some kind of metal or something because it uses its stellar hearing to see Hank tell everyone about the incredible oil bird in the tropical rainforests of South America there's a flying animal that lives in colonies in caves emerges at night in search for food and navigates using echolocation and I'm not talking about a bat believe it or not I'm actually talking about a bird the bizarre oil bird known to locals as the Guara oil birds diverged from their closest living relatives 50 million years ago and in a lot of ways they've become more like bats than other birds they roost high up in caves for example one oil bird colony can include as many as 20,000 crow sized birds and since there's not a lot of nesting material available in a cave they build their funnel shaped nests out of a mixture of regurgitated fruit and their own feces sounds cozy yeah and like a lot of nocturnal animals including many bats for the record they have excellent night vision they accomplished that by packing their retinas with rods the light receptor is responsible for vision in dim lighting in fact oil bird retinas have the highest density of rods of any known vertebrate 1 million of them per square millimeter your retina has a max of about 150,000 rods per square millimeter these birds have so many rods that there's almost no room left over for cones the other light receptors which handle visual acuity and color that means that their view of the world is probably fuzzy and dull even the world record holder for rod density needs some light to see though so that bird's eyes are no help in pitch-black caverns which might be why they're the only birds that have figured out how to echolocate to keep from getting confused in a densely populated cave each bird clicks at a slightly different frequency and unlike bats oil birds clicks are audible to human ears so if you were standing in one of these caves when the birds return to rest you'd hear quite the cacophony oil birds resemblance to bats is a classic example of convergent evolution where different animals facing similar pressures from natural selection end up with similar traits they're so bad like that you would think we'd called them bat birds but if you're wondering where that name came from yes there's a story there oil bird comes from the fact their favorite food is the fatty fruit of the oil Paul baby oil birds in particular become so plump from their rich diet that indigenous people in Venezuela used to collect chicks so they could render their fat in pots to use as fuel you know the more I think about the more I like bat birds instead maybe it's time for like a rebranding while we're on the subject of birds that have mastered darkness let's talk about owls owls have evolved some pretty impressive adaptations to rule the night and here's oh look it's Hank again with the details as animals go Al's are pretty awesome I mean just look at Hedwig there are about 200 owl species on earth and you'll find them on every continent except Antarctica they can be as small as the sparrow sized elf owl or as huge the Eagle sized Great Grey and most are nocturnal loners with broad heads an upright stance big front-facing eyes and gnarly talons many cultures associate owls with either wisdom or death and though they aren't quite as bright as some other birds like crows or Ravens the death thing might not be so far off because if there's one thing Al's are really good at it is killing things quietly you might even say that that the ninjas of the bird world equipped with some unique adaptations to make them experts at both hunting and getting their creep on let's start with their feathers for example maybe you've been out walking at some point and you heard some whooshing sound only look up and see a bird flying overhead well odds are that was not an owl making that noise most birds have smooth sleek primary feathers which create a new easy kind of turbulence as their wings collide with the air and that's fine if you're a plant-eating goose or say a falcon who's so fast it doesn't matter if your prey hears you're coming because they're already toast but to a night hunting owl catching dinner is all about stealth so their feathers are specially adapted to reduce that air turbulence and the noise that comes with it instead of a smooth stiff leading edge and owls primary feathers look more like combs those serrated edges actually break up the air as it hits the wings creating a bunch of smaller less noisy disturbances in the air and even those get muffled by a softer fringe at the trailing edge of the wing but owls also come equipped with an extra silencer they're smaller down feathers which absorb whatever noise is left over magic feathers are awesome in all but probably the first thing you'll notice about an owl are their ridiculously huge front-facing eyes which can weigh up to 5% of their body weight all the better to see you with because most owls are nocturnal their eyes need to be good at processing whatever light is available so allies have large corneas and pupils that allow extra light to enter the eye and funnel back into the image forming retina and compared to many other birds owl retinas contain more of the light-sensitive rods that help them see in low-light conditions plus the front facing set up let's Al's look forward with both eyes giving them a wider range of binocular vision than most birds it also helps them judge distance and dimensions like how humans do it so it is not easy to squeeze such big eyes into a comparatively small skull so allies aren't round like a typical eyeball instead they're more elongated in tube shaped they're also fixed into their sockets by rings of bone called sclerotic rings which means owls can't roll their eyes and if they want to look to the side they have to turn their whole head that said contrary to popular belief no owl can go full Linda Blair and rotate their head all the way around though they can rotate them three-quarters of the way in either direction which is still pretty impressive I mean imagine looking to your right by turning your head all the way to your left it's hard to picture for a good reason because if you tried it you would either cut off the flow of blood to your brain and have a stroke tear an artery or simply snap your neck and in any of those cases you would be dead so you know don't try it but how come Al's can do that well for starters they have more vertebrate in their necks 14 compared to our seven and their heads are connected to their necks by just one pivot joint as opposed to our to this single joint gives the bird's head much more flexibility allowing it to pivot its head on the vertebral column sort of like how you can pivot your body on one foot those neck bones also feature extra large holes about 10 times larger than the artery that passes through them and probably hold air sacs that help cushion that fragile artery while the owl twists its neck so it doesn't tear but in 2012 a research team from Johns Hopkins discovered that there's more to the owl neck rotation puzzle they found that while most animals arteries typically get smaller the farther they are from the heart an owl's main neck artery actually gets a little bigger as it nears the brain ballooning out those larger areas might act as reservoirs storing a little extra blood to send to the brain when the main vessel gets temporarily blocked during more extreme neck rotation so here's to Hedwig and all her other fellow owls master ninja birds of the night as cool as night ninjas are the birds in our next episode have mastered an impressive hunting trick we once thought was unique to our species they use fire to capture their prey seriously and here's stefan to tell us about nature's arsonists the fire Hawks it's no secret that birds can be pretty smart you've probably heard of birds using tools or solving puzzles but in Australia they take things to the next level there some birds are said to intentionally start fires making them the only animals besides humans known to do that most animals don't like being near fire the standard instinct around flames is to drop what you're doing and run but some birds of prey do just the opposite if they spot a wildfire they'll actually fly towards it they've figured out that fire causes little critters to panic and flee making them easy targets as long as the birds are careful not to get burned a fire can mean an easy meal this incredible behavior is called fire foraging and it's been seen in predatory birds around the world but in Australian tropical savannas some birds seem to take this strategy a step further they're known as fire Hawks because they're said to fly into active fires carry away a burning stick in their beak or talons and then drop it into dry brush to start a totally new fire there's a lot we don't know about this avian arson it's never been reliably captured on photo or video but the stories traced back generations around the world there are human cultures that have lived alongside native wildlife for hundreds or thousands of years and these cultures can be a valuable source of what's called indigenous ecological knowledge and a 20-17 study set out to collect this local knowledge most stories identify three species as the arsonists black kites whistling kites and brown Falcons though there may be other birds that do it too and the team found that at least 12 different ethnic aboriginal groups reported first-hand knowledge of fire spreading in these birds there even in some of their religious ceremonies one account goes as far as to suggest that early Aboriginal people may have learned the trick of fire foraging by watching the birds the study also collected observations from non Aboriginal people including modern-day firefighters as you can imagine birds that can start fires could be a real pain if your job is to control blazes so local firefighters are often on the lookout for the birds one firefighter reported an instance where he spent an afternoon putting out seven different fires started by kites and another witnessed a group of birds start a fire that burned so out of control that had damaged a local cattle station in total the study found accounts of fire spreading from West Australia Queensland and the Northern Territory a total area of thousands of square kilometers so it may not be video footage but it's pretty comprehensive ethanol ornithological evidence that is cultural knowledge of birds the behavior still hasn't been scientifically observed and documented so the researchers aren't done yet they plan to conduct more interviews set up field experiments and equip local Rangers with the tools to catch the birds in the act and all that will hopefully reveal how often the birds start fires and how firefighters can best plan around the behavior and it may even help researchers figure out how they learn to do it in the first place fire Hawk will forever be the most hardcore name ever given to a bird it's just so metal even though they're kind of sweet compared to the birds in the next episode goals yes those big things that like to steal food from your Beach picnics if you thought they were just annoying well Hank has some news for you when you're out enjoying like a nice picnic on the beach you might occasionally find a gull trying to grab some of your chips and you like it just stop bothering us you know we'll just imagine for a moment that instead of your picnic basket those goals we're after you're your flesh because one particular species of goal has recently developed a taste for live mammal meat revealing just how adaptable these animals are most girls eat fish or invertebrates like crabs though they'll occasionally snack on carcasses if they wash up they're considered generalist opportunistic feeders they'll pretty much take whatever they can get but in the past 50 years or so one species the kelp gull has developed a fondness for mammalian flesh and learned just how to get it it all started in Peninsula Valdes Argentina a birthing ground for southern right whales giving birth is exhausting for everyone involved so both new mamas and their babies like to relax and rest near the ocean surface and that's precisely when the gulls attack these half a metre long roughly one kilogram Birds land on the whales backs and peel off pieces of skin until the wound becomes big enough that they can dig into the blubber underneath gross and mean they mostly attack calves because the babies haven't learned how to arch their back or flick the goals off like their moms have but what's really terrifying is that the gulls hunger for flesh is growing stronger between 2003 and 2014 more than 50 calves died per year on average in Valdez compared to only 8 per year in the decade before people aren't 100% certain that all those deaths were caused by gulls but scientists have noted an increase in the number and severity of attacks a percentage of Wales with gull inflicted wounds rose from 2% in the 1970s to a gruesome 99% of the 2000s according to a 2015 plus one study and the situation is now so bad that the goals are considered a significant threat to right whale populations in the area these guys got too smart so since 2012 local governments have been culling some of the murder birds to try and protect the whales but it's not just Argentinian whales that have to keep an eye on the skies health goals in Namibia have recently discovered a taste for baby fur seal eyeballs like something out of Alfred Hitchcock's the birds the gulls will repeatedly swoop down and peck at the eyeballs of unattended Cape fur seal pups until the pups go blind once they're unable to see more gulls joining the feast and peck at the juicy way I'm just gonna stop I'm gonna read what the script even says it's too sad let's just say the pups don't make it and since we've only known that gulls are preying on seal pups since 2014 no one knows yet if seal numbers will be affected these chilling behaviors likely developed in part because gulls have such a generalist diet but also because they're quite good at observational learning meaning they can learn new behaviors just from watching other gulls so just a few likely discovered that squishy eyeballs and hunks of blubber are great sources of protein fat and fluid and others quickly caught on to the new snacks which explains why the behaviors are pretty much only seen in the same areas they began though they could spread and we might also be to blame for the increase in the gulls murderous behavior because of our activities their usual prey is harder to come by but this hasn't hurt their numbers as these flexible Birds have learned that our refuse is full of potential food so unlike many species they do well in the places we've figuratively and literally trashed I guess we should count ourselves lucky that they haven't figured out what human eyeballs taste like yet just have it have a chip have a chip it's fine you can have my chips well it looks like I'm never going to the beach again I need a bit of a palate cleanser after that horror show so how about some pretty fragrant sea birds Lee definitely not goals in the next episode have a delightful scent to them but enough for me I'll let Hank explain what's going on on the remote rocky islands of the North Pacific you might find a happy looking little bird called the crested auklets it looks kind of like a cross between a penguin and a quail they live in big dense noisy colonies and they go out to the ocean to feed they also apparently smell like tangerines the smell which has been described as distinctive and pungent emerges at the beginning of the breeding season as for what's actually causing it the smell seems to come from a mix of compounds secreted by a patch of special hair like possibly hollow feathers called wick feathers found on a particular area of skin on their back it has got a little tangerine patch back there the mix of compounds is dominated by aldehydes a kind of chemical that contains a carbon bonded to a hydrogen and double bonded to an oxygen as for why there are two hypotheses one is that the smelly aldehydes might be a way for the birds to repel parasites like lice kind of like a built-in canna bug spray experiments have shown that some of the compounds in the smell can repel or paralyze ticks or lice the other idea is that it might be some kind of sexual display or some other sort of social signal during courtship crested auklets approached potential mates and bury their bill in that patch in what's known as a rough sniff and they can definitely smell it studies have shown that the birds can tell the scent apart from other smells and even appeared to be attracted to it when presented with a smelly fake bird which is kind of neat because for a long time many experts thought birds couldn't really smell things that idea was debunked by scientists in the 1960s and that research doesn't have much of anything to do with crested auklets but as a myth it's had surprising staying power it might seem kind of funny but choosing the smelliest mate might have some benefits if the scent is a parasite repellent for example a smelly mate is less likely to pass infestations to their mate or their offspring the smell might also be an indicator of how healthy the animal is in general its body has to produce those smelly chemicals which requires energy and because all smells eventually fade over time an animal that depends on cologne to win a mate has to keep making new compounds all the time which means it has the energy to burn to make smelly molecules even though those reefs could be used for other more survival oriented things this means for crested auklets a strong scent might be a way to show that you're not only healthy but you have the resources to burn and finally let's talk about birds that can talk like us parrots ability to speak is really impressive and olivia is here to explain how they manage to do this thing that even our closest relatives can't do parents have an uncanny ability to mimic human speech they're mad vocal skills have let them co-host TED Talks sing in heavy metal bands and made them the pet of choice to deliver punchlines in pirate movies part of this is just being able to make the sounds that we do parrots have articulate tongues which can move around in their mouths and shift frequencies to make human-like vowel sounds but mostly parrots have unique brains when the majority of birds chirp or sing they're making noises that are hardwired but parrots can create new vocalizations which scientists call vocal learning not only that but something about their neurons make them incredibly good at vocal mimicry replicating the sounds or calls of other species only three types of birds are capable of vocal learning hummingbirds songbirds and parrots scientists don't know exactly how vocal learning helps them but freestyling might let different groups of birds tell each other apart which could help them identify enemies and form strong social bonds despite being very different birds hummingbirds songbirds and parrots all have seven clusters of neurons in their brain called song nuclei since other birds don't have these brain regions scientists think they've got to be behind vocal learning the song nuclei are surrounded by or next to parts of the brain that control movement the ones involved in learning are towards the front of the brain and those involved in sound production are farther back but just having song nuclei doesn't explain why parrots are so much better at well parroting speech now most research on mimicry and parrots uses the common parakeet or budgie as a model for the whole group but in 2015 researchers took a look at the brains of a bunch of different parrots and found that they all had something that hummingbirds and songbirds didn't an extra layer or shell surrounding each nucleus it's a bit like the candy coating on a skittle parrots have the full candy while other birds just have the fruity core and differences in the amount of shells seem to correlate to mimicking abilities expert imitators like the African Grey parrot have much larger shell regions and smaller cores than copycats who are less skilled like budgies and peach face lovebirds so far it's just a correlation so these shells may not be the reason or the only reason why parrots are super mimics not to mention scientists don't know how the shells function right now although they know that the shells linked to each other and make different connections the course based on similarities and the types of genes expressed in each brain region scientists think that this double layered song system may have come about because song nuclei got duplicated more than 29 million years ago we humans didn't gain our refined linguistic abilities until millions of years later so when it really comes down to it who's mimicking whom thanks for learning about these amazing birds with me we'd love to hear about which was your favorite and why in the comment section also since it's the last week of November I want to remind you that it's the last week to get this month's scishow pin every month we have a new design and this month it's Mariner 9 that rhymed anyhow come December 1st we'll have a whole new pin for you so if you want this one either for yourself or a space fan in your life you'd better get yours soon just head over to dftba.com and search for the scishow pin of the month or peruse that merch bar below [Music]

Channel: SciShow

Views: 935,339

Rating: 4.8844409 out of 5

Keywords: SciShow, science, Hank, Green, education, learn, thanksgiving, turkey, pigeon, oilbird, bird, animal, biology, zoology, ornithology, bat, echolocation, sea gull, gull, michael aranda, aranda, firehawk, predator, raptor, hawk, crested auklet, parrot, micmic, compilation, holiday, special

Id: TCT7qYXgmso

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 28 2019