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30/11/2021

This Muppet-faced frogmouth is the 'most Instagrammable bird' on Earth
Researchers scoured more than 27,000 bird photos on Instagram, so you don't have to.
The sky is full of exceptional birds. Cardinals bedecked with half-male, half-female plumage; godwits that can soar 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) across oceans nonstop; parrots that can best Harvard undergrads in a classic con game (no student loans required).

Then, there are birds whose only claim to fame is their ugliness — and, according to a new study, those may be the most exceptional birds of all.

Meet the frogmouth — that is, if you haven't already brushed feathers with this big-eyed owl lookalike on Instagram. This nocturnal, Muppet-faced avian was once hailed as "the world's most unfortunate-looking bird" in a 2004 paper in the journal Nature Australia. Now, scientists writing in the journal i-Perception have given the frogmouth a new title: The "most Instagrammable bird" on Earth.
What does that mean, exactly? It's not that the frogmouth appears in more Instagram photos than any other avian; Indeed, after looking at more than 27,000 bird photos on Instagram, the researchers found the frogmouth appeared in only 65 of them, they wrote in their study, published April 22. However, in those 65 photos, the frogmouth garnered far more likes than it should have — and more likes than any other bird species — based on the number of users who likely saw those photos.
In their study, the researchers looked at photos posted by nine of the most-followed bird accounts on Instagram (Those accounts are , , , , , , , , ). Together, those accounts serve an audience of nearly 3.5 million users.

To judge a bird's Instagrammability, the researchers calculated the expected number of likes each photo should get based on the time the photo was posted and the audience size of the account. Photos that got more likes than expected got a positive score, while photos that got fewer likes got a negative score.

A few aesthetic factors seemed to consistently bump photos higher in the rankings. For example, the researchers wrote, birds with blue and yellow plumage consistently scored higher than birds with yellow and green feathers. Unsurprisingly, the team also found that birds tended to perform better the more unique or unusual they looked.

Besides the frogmouth, other high-ranking birds included "colorful pigeons with decorative plumage, the emerald turaco with its crown-like head feathers and the hoopoe, also wearing a distinct feather crown and showing off typical high-contrast feathering," the team wrote.

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As for the bottom of the list? Two seabirds — the sandpiper and the oystercatcher — consistently failed to catch users' eyes, as did storks and vultures.

The frogmouth's "surprising" victory in this study is a "matter of poetic justice," the authors wrote, considering its reputation as the "most unfortunate-looking bird." Perhaps it's time for froggy to pack in its career as a bird and become a full-time Instagram influencer. With peepers like those, it should have no trouble landing a sponsorship from Warby Parker.

30/11/2021

Mass bird die-off in eastern US baffles scientists
Scientists have ruled out the most likely suspects, but the cause of the illness is still unknown.
Hundreds of young starlings, blue jays, grackles and other birds in the eastern U.S. are dying from a mysterious illness. It has the makings of an avian epidemic, but to fight it, scientists first have to find the cause.

So far, scientists have ruled out some of the most common culprits of bird die-offs, including Salmonella and Chlamydia. But the actual cause remains frustratingly elusive. Several scientists contacted by Live Science declined to comment, citing the ongoing nature of the investigations.

This mysterious illness was first reported in Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and Maryland in May but has become much more widespread in the past two months. Wildlife rescue organizations in an area that stretches from Kentucky to Delaware and as far west as Wisconsin are seeing the bird illness.
"In May, we started to realize that something unusual was going on," Chelsea Jones, a spokesperson for the Animal Welfare League of Arlington, Virginia, told Live Science. At that time, concerned volunteers started bringing in birds blinded by a white crust that sealed their eyelids. Many of the affected birds were disoriented, lethargic and unable to fly, which suggested the illness affected its victims neurologically. Most of the bird victims were young, often fledglings or a little older.

"We have received 300 birds so far," Jones said. "But that is just counting the deceased birds; the real total is much higher."

Several of the deceased birds from her organization have been sent to the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (DWR) for testing. Now, the DWR is working with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which has enlisted the help of several diagnostic laboratories to try to diagnose the disease.

"To date, all of the findings have either been inconsistent or inconclusive," Lisa Murphy, an associate professor of toxicology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, told NPR. Murphy is the co-director of Penn State's Wildlife Futures Program, one of the laboratories performing postmortem analysis on affected birds along with the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, the University of Georgia Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study and the Indiana Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Purdue University.

However, the USGS is narrowing the list of bacterial, parasitic and viral suspects. So far, the scientists have ruled out Salmonella, which was responsible for an avian epidemic across the western U.S. earlier this year, and Chlamydia, which is often carried by birds and transmitted to humans, according to the CDC. The agency has also ruled out avian influenza, West Nile virus, herpes viruses, poxviruses and viruses that cause yellow fever. And none of the birds analyzed so far have tested positive for Newcastle disease virus, which can cause conjunctivitis in birds, according to the USGS. However, some environmental toxicology and microbiology tests are still ongoing.
The illness is sweeping through bird populations, but at this time, there is no evidence that this illness is transmissible to humans, according to USGS spokesperson. However, out of an abundance of caution, officials suggest keeping pets away from sick birds.

At this time, the USGS and state agencies recommend a feathered form of social distancing in areas where the illness has been reported. Just as pathogens spread easily among humans in bars, schools and restaurants, rapid disease transmission is possible among birds congregating at feeders. Therefore, experts recommend taking feeders down until the mystery illness subsides.

30/11/2021

These giant birds could eviscerate you. People were raising them 18,000 years ago.
Whoever came up with the age-old riddle "Which came first: the chicken or the egg?" failed to consider the world's most dangerous (and Australia's largest) bird — the cassowary (Casuarius).

New research suggests that the relationship between humans and cassowaries dates back to the late Pleistocene era — several thousand years before humans domesticated chickens and geese. "And this is not some small fowl," lead study author Kristina Douglass, an archaeologist at Penn State, said in a statement. "It is a huge, ornery, flightless bird that can eviscerate you — most likely, the dwarf variety that weighs 20 kilos (44 pounds)." By examining the remains of ancient cassowary eggshells, Douglass and an international team of researchers determined that some 18,000 years ago, people in New Guinea were collecting, hatching — and possibly raising — cassowary chicks, which the researchers consider a sophisticated food-gathering technique. This represents the earliest known evidence of intentional bird rearing.

Using a combination of 3D imaging, computer modeling and egg morphology, the scientists examined over 1,000 fragments of cassowary eggshells dating to between 6,000 and 18,000 years ago. "We used that approach to see whether or not there was any pattern in terms of when people were harvesting cassowary eggs," Douglass told Live Science. "And we found that there was a pattern and that people were harvesting eggs preferentially in the later stages of development."
According to Douglass, people would have kept these eggs for one of two purposes: to eat them or to raise the hatched chicks for their meat and feathers. Today, late-stage fertilized eggs are a popular street food in several East Asian and South Pacific countries — notably, the Philippines, according to a paper published in 2019 in the Journal of Ethnic Foods. Known as balut, the dish is usually made with duck eggs today. But Douglass and her team suggest that people in New Guinea may have been eating cassowary balut thousands of years ago.

30/11/2021

30/11/2021