Don't Touch That Bird! It's Poisonous.

[n2doc]

Posted by Ross Pomeroy at Thu, 25 Apr 2013 01:00:56
As a graduate student in the early 1990s, ornithologist Jack Dumbacher performed the almost obligatory trek to New Guinea to study the island's legendary birds-of-paradise. It was there, in the country's lush, dense rainforest that he unwittingly discovered the world's first known poisonous bird.

Dumbacher and his compatriots had placed mist nets up in the forest in order to capture and study the native flying fauna. One day, extracting birds from these nets, he was handling a number of hooded pitohuis, songbirds with black and orange plumage. Frazzled by their temporary captivity, the birds bit and scratched wildly as they were being released from their tethered confines.

"The cuts really stung, but we had so many nets to [deal with] we didn't have time to stop and put band-aids on our cuts," Dumbacher recalled, "so we popped our fingers in our mouth and ran off to the next net."

But the researchers quickly started to feel funny.

"Our mouths began to tingle, burn, and even go numb. The sensation lasted for several hours," Dumbacher remembered.

more

http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2013/04/dont-touch-that-bird-its-poisonous.html

[Little Star]

1. This OP belongs in the Birders Group. lol k&r

[dimbear]

2. It's a wonder more birds aren't poisonous. If one small bird

takes out one hawk, the family of the small bird comes out ahead. Most animals with this strategy are sort of clumsy, tho. It's a little desperate.

It would be interesting to check whether any other birds imitate this bird's appearance.