This Newly Discovered Bird Has Feathers That Absorb 99.95 Percent Of Light

[Judi Lynn]

By Rosie McCall
26 APR 2018, 17:46

The superb bird-of-paradise (Lophorina superba) is famous for its "Vantablack" plumage, which is so extremely black that it absorbs 99.95 percent of sunlight when faced head-on (technically vanta black absorbs 99.96 percent). Now, new research published in PeerJ reveals it is not one but two different species of bird.

Wildlife experts have named the "new" species the Vogelkop Superb Bird-Of-Paradise and renamed the more prevalent species the Greater Superb Bird-of-Paradise.

"After you see what the Vogelkop form looks like and acts like in the wild, there's little room for doubt that it is a separate species," Ed Scholes, an evolutionary biologist at the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology's Birds-of-Paradise Project, said in a statement.

"The courtship dance is different. The vocalizations are different. The females look different. Even the shape of the displaying male is different."

More:
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/this-newly-discovered-bird-has-feathers-that-absorb-9995-percent-of-light/