Birds

August 30, 2023

Ornithologist Wears a Giant Bird Head To Earn the Trust of Wild Birds, but Fails Miserably

Being a scientist doesn't always mean sitting at the computer or working in a lab. If anything, this career also allows you to do some fun stuff in the name of science, right? For example, an unnamed ornithologist—an expert on the behavior of birds—found a unique way to study his subjects. He wore a giant bird mask during his visits to a bird habitat for a year… and he did it for science.

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April 28, 2023

Parrots Taught to Video Call Each Other Show Increased Happiness According to New Study

Researchers have found that some birds love firing up a video call just as much as we do. This shouldn't come as a surprise, as in the wild, birds live in flocks. Loneliness can be a real problem for pet birds, so scientists from Northeastern University wanted to see if video chatting with other birds could improve their quality of life. The results are astounding.

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April 9, 2023

Fascinating Discovery Finds That the White-throated Sparrow Species Has Four Sexes

Sex in nature is hardly simple. While “biological sex” is often used in reductive and factually incorrect political parlance, the science of chromosomes is far from a simple dichotomy. In the natural world, some species change their sex as they age. Others such as the white-throated sparrow have a whopping four sexes or genotypes. As described in Current Biology, the species has evolved to have a surprising chromosomal anomaly which makes mating more complex.

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