Tag: animal

the hoatzin, also known as the ‘stink chicken’ or ‘skunkbird’ is a pheasant-sized bird native to the rainforests of south america. with many bizarre and un-birdlike traits, the hoatzin is often compared to reptiles. young hoatzins are born with two claws on their wings that assist them to climb in the rainforest (the claws eventually fall off). hoatzins have a bare face and large crest resembling a mohawk. the hoatzin earned their strange nicknames from their process of fermenting food inside their overly large crop, which makes them smell unpleasant.

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red crossbills are found throughout north america; a member of the finch family, they are distinctive because of their odd beak, which gives them their name. crossbills use their unusual beak as leverage to extract seeds from conifers. male crossbills come in shades from red to yellow, and females are yellow, greenish yellow or brown.

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something that’s super cool about birds is that a bird’s name can mean something totally different to different people. because usually when we talk about birds, we shorten their names (calling a bluebird a bluebird, instead of a eastern/western/mountain bluebird)

so, for me, someone who lives in north america, the word ‘robin’ would most likely make me think of the american robin:

for someone who lives in europe, it’s likely the very different european robin:

if you’re from australia, there’s very many species called ‘robin’; maybe you’d think of a scarlet robin or rose robin

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it’s so cool to see how different we all visualize words like ‘stork’ or ‘parrot’ or even ‘bird’!

despite having very similar distinct body shape & behavior, swifts and swallows are only very distantly related. the two families are an example of convergent evolution – when two unrelated organisms evolve the same traits for the same purpose. despite looking very much like swallows, swifts are actually closely related to hummingbirds.

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researchers found that ravens are capable of planning for the future. while they exhibit some of this behavior in the wild, such as storing food, more complex examples were found during testing. ravens were able to store a tool for accessing food and retrieve it later when presented with opportunity to use it, and also understood the value of saving a token that could be exchanged at a later time for food.

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