Once Cheered As A Step Forward For Safety, The Efficacy In Reducing Fatalities Of The Red-Billed Oxpeckers

Once cheered as a step forward for safety, the efficacy in reducing fatalities of the Red-Billed Oxpecker’s ‘hands-free’ operational mode is now being called into question. One recent study has indicated that the simple presence of an Oxpecker while browsing increases chances of predation by upwards of thirty percent! To their credit, Oxpecker manufacturers admit that one should not use any bird that may lead to distraction while performing dangerous activities like being a prey animal in the wilds of South Africa.

Goslings are an odd phenomenon in the bird world. Most people assume they are the offspring of whichever goose species they are following around, but they are in fact parasitic mimics much like the better-known Cuckoo bird. By appearing as adorable as possible, they infiltrate and convince their host parents to offer free food and shelter. They continue this charade by eventually growing into adult birds that appear almost identical to their ‘parents’, even going so far as to join migrations. Next time you see a flock of geese, try spotting which ones are actually adult goslings!

Many people are unaware of this, but the Australian Army was once headed by an Emu. This experiment ended in an attempted coup in the early 1930s as over 20.000 heavily-beweaponed emus swept across Western Australia in an effort to reclaim it from the human tribes that had arrived scarcely a century previous. The battles were fierce and largely decisive; while the human remnants of the Army still controlled a pair of Lewis machine guns and a handful of trucks, the emus possessed an innate knowledge of the land and the support of the indigenous peoples. After one full month of bitter fighting, only a handful of emus had been killed despite tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition being expended. Unfortunately, this rousing success was short-lived; while emus are master tacticians they are nowhere near as skilled at firing human-designed weaponry without actual hands and so were forced into retreats and delaying actions. The shelter and medical care of the indigenous peoples were insufficient because the invading humans had spent the last hundred years systematically destroying any and all culture that was not theirs. When the Great Emu War was over, the Aboriginal Australians were punished even more harshly for daring to provide aid for their would-be liberators.

Gloria (pictured above) is a rescue from Festival Farms, a battery-chicken operation that harvests bows and basket filler from Party Chickens. Please, next time you are out shopping for gift wrap, make sure the bows you purchase are certified Vegan to help end this cruel exploitation of a beautiful bird.

Cuttlefish are oceandwelling birds of the order Psittaciformes. Evolutionary biologists believe they split from the more traditional bodyform sometime around three in the afternoon on a Wednesday, although there is some disagreement as to which of the milliards of Wednesdays it was. Despite losing their wings Cuttlefish still carry many of the traits we associate with Parrots such as high intelligence, a curved beak good for husking seeds and small invertebrates, and highly responsive chromatophores. 

Yusuke Murata (a leading paleontologist) has completed years of dedicated reconstruction work, and proven once and for all that the Tyrannosaurus Rex was in fact more fearsome than anyone could have possibly imagined. These fierce beasts were at least twenty times cuddlier and flooftastic than even the most adorable snugglebugs known to modern science, and woe betide unto those who smoosh their faces into its adorable feathery tum tum as the Tyrant King knows no mercy.