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Trivia ~ Living Things ~ Birds
What bird grows to a height of 8 feet and can weigh in at 350 pounds? Who said a parakeet on steroids? It's the ostrich, of course. In addition to coming in the large, economy size, ostriches are hearty enough to tolerate temperatures down to about 20 below zero Fahrenheit and they can live to about age 50, even in the wild. Despite their size, captive birds can thrive on about $75 worth of food a year.
You say you think they do what? Shhh. At their size they're big enough to bury YOUR head in the sand. Their brains are small, but not small enough that they would do what people mistakenly think they do.
An ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain.
Ostriches bury their heads in the sand right? Nope. They actually never bury their heads in the sand.
The belief that they do may come from the way that Ostrich chicks--prone to being nabbed by predators--often try to hide from them. Since they can't out run their predator, the chicks often flop to the ground and lie motionless, hoping to blend in with the grassy surroundings. Their long necks are well camouflaged, so a chick looks like a blob on the ground. This seems to have made people think that the thing buried its head. (Proving, I suppose, that we're no smarter than the predator in this tale.)
It takes 1 hour and 45 minutes to hard boil a 3 pound ostrich egg
Although most creatures with a voice have just one set of vocal chords, songbirds have two. Because of their double voices, they can sing with two pitches at the same time.
A bird's voice organ (called a syrinx [SIR-inks]) is located much deeper in its body than the vocal chords of a mammal. In most birds it is just above the place where the windpipe branches into two bronchi (one for each lung). But in songbirds, through evolution the syrinx has moved into the bronchi and split in two. That's why songbirds can make such rich sounds. With two syrinxes, they can sing in harmony with themselves.
There are many mysteries in how songbirds sing. No one has explained how they manage to sing so loudly, and much is unknown about how they learn songs and modify them. The syrinx itself is a very complex organ that is not fully understood.
Do chickens communicate?
Ordinary chickens have at least 25 different calls and they use them in some language-like ways. Not only do they communicate directlywith each other, but they consider what they are about to say and can even tell lies.
When a rooster finds some food, he sometimes makes a "took took took"sound. The "took took" call is repeated much more when there is a hen nearby. Hearing the call, the hen usually strolls over to the male, who may offer her choice morsels from his own beak. Hens who hear "took took" also peer down at the ground, as if looking for food. But sometimes a rooster will say "took took" when there's no food just to get the female to come over.
It appears that at least some chicken calls are more than just reflex reactions, since they change depending on whether others are listening and are sometimes used for deception.
Recent research using high-speed films of acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus) shows that their heads can endure up to 1200 gravities of force when the beak hits the wood. Despite this force, their brains do not suffer damage.
The woodpecker's brain is tightly packed into a capsule of dense but spongy bone tissue, which absorbs some of the force of sudden shocks to the outside of the brain case. There is very little fluid surrounding the brain, so it is not free to jerk around. In addition, there are special muscles in the woodpecker's head that contract at just the right moment to absorb still more of the shock. There are also support structures that pass around the back of the
skull, starting near the base of the tongue.
The woodpecker's brain is not the only part of the bird's head that must be protected. If it didn't close its eyes just before each peck, they would fly clear out of their sockets.
Strange, but birds just aren't designed to go backwards. People don't do a very good job at it either, but at least we can if we want to. There is one bird, however, that can go backwards: the hummingbird.
In the same vein, the kangaroo can't go backwards either.
What bird has the longest migration path?
You think that you're keen on piling up those frequent flyer miles? Consider the Arctic Tern. When it flies south it covers almost the distance from the North to the South Pole, 11,000 miles in all.
This 17-inch winged wonder flies further than any of its fine-feathered friends. It's habitat ranges from New England well into the Arctic Ocean, from which it migrates south in August. After spending part of the winter in Antarctica it does the Tern-around, flying the 11,000 miles back to its home, arriving in June.
Do you suppose it's ever occurred to this birdbrain that it gains nothing by flying from one cold place to another cold place for the winter? Who's its travel agent?
The pelican is a noisy bird when it's a baby. But, by the time it's an adult, the bird will lose its voice. What's more: its pouch is not used to store fish, as is commonly believed, but to scoop fish out of the water--much like a net. The fish are then dropped into its stomach where digestion can begin.
Anybody can get a parrot to say, "Polly want a cracker." You can also get your birdbrain friend to specify the brand, what kind of cheese it wants on it and even the right wine to go with it.
There is a budgie, an Australian parrot relative, whose vocabulary tops 800 words. Still not impressed? Well, there are even two parrots that have been taught to speak Maypure, an extinct language once heard in the Amazon, a few words of which were preserved phonetically by European explorers. The birds were taught Maypure at Yale (they took the SAT's to get into Yale in English, though). One of the first words they learned was "arata," which means banana. When they made a mistake, they were called "cueti," or stupid.
Maybe the trainers were a bit cueti. Why take such smart birds and confuse them into thinking they're monkeys?
Swans are not as placid as they look
The deadly coral snake is beautiful. Sharks are graceful as they glide through the water beneath the surface. Can you see where this is going?
The attractiveness of swans is in proportion to your distance from them. They are very territorial, and their sense of territory can be mighty expansive - like most of a lake. You will find out how fast you can swim if one ever bears down on you in the water.
Swans will drown a duck or goose that gets too close. They have been known to stab people with their beaks and have occasionally broken arms. Swans will jump into a boat to attack people, and with their 8-foot wingspread can sweep a small child overboard. They have also been known to chase people for considerable distances on land.
The barn owl--even though its ears can't be seen. is believed to have the best hearing of all animals. Its dish-shaped face enables the owl to receive sounds like sonar.
A baby Robin will consume14 feet of earthworms per day.
Certain birds of prey (the African serpent eagle and the American kestrel, for example) have visual acuity 2.4 to 2.6 times greater than humans. They can see a 1 mm long insect from a treetop 18 meters above ground.
The Australian emu holds the land speed for birds at 31 mph.
Because its tongue is too short for its beak, the toucan must juggle its food before swallowing it.
Ben Franklin wanted the turkey, not the eagle, to be the U.S. national symbol. He considered the eagle a "bird of bad moral character" because it lives "by sharping and robbing."
A prairie chicken is not a guy from the Midwest who won’t fight you no matter what bad name you call him. No, and in fact it’s not a chicken of any kind. The prairie chicken is really a grouse.
There’s the greater prairie chicken, Tympanuchus cupido, and the lesser prairie chicken, Tympanuchus pallidinctus. (Got that?) One is two inches longer than the other. The greater is also the brighter, with white, yellow, black and brown feathers. The male prairie chicken may be the only bird to boogaloo. When it’s time to mate, he’s got ants in his pants and he’s got to dance. He courts the female by blowing up pouches at the side of his neck, starts raising a racket, turns up the feathers on his neck, flairs his tale, spreads his wings, shimmies, hops and struts. Mercy!
Well, it’s more effective than, “Come here often?”, "Where have you been all of my life?", ...........
The roadrunner's real-life behavior is every bit as eccentric as its animated counterpart in reel life. No wonder the roadrunner also goes by the name of the "ground cuckoo."
The roadrunner builds its nest in a cactus and will dine on a snake by first banging it against a rock and then wolfing it down whole. The two foot-long roadrunner, half of which is tail, actually plays chicken on the roads of its southwestern habitat, running ahead of speeding cars and then veering off at the last minute. It flies when it has to, but much prefers to run at up to 15 miles an hour. (usually without Nikes)
But don't expect to hear it go "beep, beep," as the celluloid version does. More appropriate for a member of the cuckoo family, it goes, "coo, coo."
Although associated in the minds of most people with an ability to speak, parrots usually have a vocabulary of no more than about 20 words...-
but then such a limitation never hurt some public figures.
There may be as many chickens in the world as there are people. We don't know for sure
Maybe that's because chickens have such a poor response rate when it comes to the census.
A bird sees everything at once in total focus. Whereas the human eye is globular and must adjust to varying distances, the bird's eye is flat and can take in everything at once in a single glance.
As bits of trivia are presented on my e-mail list I will add them here. See them first by sending an e-mail to twotreestrivia-subscribe@topica.com
If you have other good Trivia to add please E-mail me
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