Hello everyone, this is Fei'er's cottage. I don't know if you saw the strange bird with many feet on my cover?
Many people may think that this is a PS composite photo or a deformed species or something, but the real answer is absolutely unbelievable. This photograph of a bird with mechanical feet is definitely a real bird, and it's not unique to this single species of bird. But it's so weird, what kind of bird is it? Today, I will introduce you to the truth of this terrible multi-legged monster bird. At the beginning, we didn't sell Guanzi, let's just come and see the true face of this multi-legged monster bird. The bird in the photo is actually called the African pheasant, also known as the African pheasant, the long-legged pheasant, and it is a rather peculiar water bird.
First look at its appearance, the African pheasant has a blue face and quite long feet, and its feet are not only long, but also look like they have eerie huge toes that are very disproportionate to its body. What do you think such a big foot is used for? In general, birds that inhabit the water have huge paws, use them to swim, and basically all have fins. But if you look closely at the soles of the African pheasant, you will find that although its feet are huge, they are not webbing, so such feet are not actually to help them swim, but to give them another unique skill, "Water Lily Walker".
Yes, this bird can use such a unique big foot to walk on a variety of floating plants, such as water lilies, and they can also catch insects, fish and even crabs in the water directly on these plants. From a distance, this bird looks like a bird that can walk on water, and is even called "the bird of Jesus" because of this. Not only that, the African pheasant even built its nest to lay its eggs on top of these floating plants, and it spends most of its life on the water, rarely flying, it can be said that it is really different from ordinary birds, very different.
Speaking of this, everyone is estimated to be very strange, although the African pheasant has a long foot, but it does not have a third or fourth foot, so what is going on in this photo? This starts with the breeding method of the African pheasant, the African pheasant is a rare polygamous system, in their world the female pheasant is the boss, it will have its own territory, in this territory all the male pheasants are its harem, these males must first build nests in the queen's territory, and then the queen will observe the construction techniques and locations of these nests, to choose their own satisfactory males and mate with it to lay eggs, each litter may lay 3 to 5 eggs, After giving birth, the queen will pat her ass and leave, and continue to find the next harem, and the responsibility of taking care of these eggs will certainly not be the responsibility of the noble queen, all of which will be taken care of by the male pheasant.
When these little pheasants hatch, they already have the signature giant paws, can walk on the surface of the water plants, and can learn to swim a few days after birth, but even if they learn the professional skills so quickly and have no survival experience, how can they be the opponents of predators snakes, otters and even crocodiles? That's why the cover photo above appeared. The picture of the strange multi-legged monster bird you see is actually the pheasant father's protective behavior to protect the chicks. In order to ensure that the pheasant does not be attacked by predators because of its slow movement, they often hide all the chicks directly in their own bodies (under the wings), and the pheasant's body is completely covered, leaving only two bird claws outside, which forms the scene of the strange multi-legged mechanical monster bird in the photo.
Pheasant papa will protect the chicks in this special way, and it will take about 40 to 70 days before these pheasants will go out to forage independently, so at this point, it is the real theme of our day - the unique child-guard behavior of birds. In fact, birds with this strange child-goer behavior are not only African pheasant plovers, but other birds such as flute plovers, double-necked plovers or cockscomb pheasants have this special "multi-legged monster" protective behavior. So, the next time you see such weird pictures, don't misunderstand them as deformed monsters, people are rare good dads.
It should also be noted that there are exceptions to the bird's protection of offspring, which is usually related to the number of eggs they lay. Simply put, the more eggs are laid, the less careful the parents take care of them, such as most of the fish that lay a large number of eggs do not take good care of their offspring; on the contrary, the fewer the number of eggs, the more careful the parents will take care of them. Some people may say, are there birds that lay only one egg? Of course there are, for example, the world's largest emperor penguin, which is this animal that lays only one egg.
The Emperor Penguin may be rarely heard of, as if the King Penguin (the first picture above) is more famous than it. In fact, before the emperor penguin was discovered, the king penguin was considered to be the largest penguin in the world, but later zoologists found this penguin that was larger than the king penguin in the Antarctic continent, so they named it the emperor penguin. They can grow up to 120 centimeters tall, the height of a normal human child. Although the animal changes its mate once a year, they will not escape during the care of the baby penguins, and both parties will take care of the baby penguins wholeheartedly. Every year in May and June, the emperor penguin mother will lay an egg, after the hard work of laying the egg, the mother penguin will take a long holiday due to physical exhaustion, and will spend about two months to forage in the distant sea to replenish her strength. You can also think of it as a confinement mom, so during this time, the task of caring for the child is of course the father.
Unlike the living environment of other animals, the temperature in Antarctica is too low, so as long as the penguin egg touches the ground, the egg will not be saved in two minutes, and there have been some penguin fathers who accidentally got the eggs on the ground because of poor technology and could not pick them up, and the little penguins burped the eggs. Therefore, in order to protect these delicate and precious eggs, the penguin father will put the eggs on his feet 24 hours a day and use its extremely warm abdomen to hatch, so that the eggs can be maintained at 36 degrees Celsius.
During this time, Papa Penguin will never let the eggs touch the ground, and this time will last for two months until Mom returns with food. During the incubation of eggs in order to avoid accidents, penguin fathers will not even eat food, most of the time stand to sleep, relying on the energy stored by the body for a living, during this period penguin fathers will even squeeze together to warm each other, and take turns to the outer circle to resist the cold wind, really quite united and cute.
When the mother penguin returns with food after the holiday, the little penguin is almost born, but the father will still carry the little penguin around, afraid that they are frozen, the mother penguin will find the father in the penguin group by barking and hand over the stick to the father, then it is the turn of the father to go out to eat a big meal, hungry.
Have you ever wondered what if a mother penguin has an accident during confinement and can't come back? For example, being eaten by other predators. At this time, when the penguin father finds that the mother has not returned, he will be a father and mother, secreting a milky white milky substance from his esophagus to feed the penguin baby to avoid the starvation of the baby penguin, which is rare in birds and there is a similar breastfeeding behavior. It can also be seen how much the penguins attach importance to their only offspring.
Like the above two kinds of animals, can be called the model father of birds, but there is also a bird's behavior of taking care of their offspring, which is really very evil! It is even called the most shameless bird. They're a bird you must have heard of, cuckoos! Appearing many times in ancient poetry, the cuckoo bird is not a rare bird, but its evil is really unprecedented.
Cuckoo mothers never take care of themselves after laying eggs, and even nests are not built, on the contrary, they will find the nests of other small birds to put their eggs in, let these birds be its free nurses help it feed the chicks, and even sometimes in order to be afraid of the mother's suspicions, the cuckoo mother will swallow one or two eggs that were originally in the nest, so that the number of eggs is the same as the original, and then the cuckoo mother will not care about anything, but do you think this is the end?
As the saying goes, the upper beam is not right and the lower beam is crooked, and the child born to the evil cuckoo mother will not be a decent gentleman. In order to adapt to this special mode of survival, the eggs of the cuckoo are always able to hatch earlier than the eggs of other birds, and the little cuckoo after hatching is ready to be broken as soon as it is born, and when the bird's mother is not there, the little cuckoo begins to push other unhatched eggs out of the nest, even if it is a small chick that has hatched, the cuckoo will never be soft on its feet and kicked out directly! Well, that's fine, there's no competitor to grab food with, and the bird nurse can only take care of the only one with all her heart, which is so evil!
And the little cuckoo has sublimated this act of pushing other eggs out of the nest into its intrinsic nature, and the zoologist who puts the paper ball into the nest without other eggs will also be instinctively kicked off by the little cuckoo, and it seems that it is born to kick something. Then the little cuckoo will grow up rapidly under the careful care of the surrogate mother, and even in the end, the surrogate mother feeds the little cuckoo, and the feeding is bigger than herself! In this way, the surrogate mother can't see it? Hey, your child is old enough to swallow you up, how blind are your eyes! However, in reality, there are really many surrogate mothers who at this stage do not know that what they take care of every day is actually the murderer who kills their own children, which really makes us those of us who watch the drama speechless.
But do you have any questions about the process of "nest parasitism" of cuckoo birds? Why won't the cuckoo's egg laying process be discovered? Why don't other birds recognize the eggs of cuckoos? In fact, this is all due to the long evolution of the cuckoo bird in order to realize this evil plan.
First of all, the appearance of the cuckoo bird is very similar to a bird of prey "sparrowhawk", and not only the appearance is similar, the cuckoo mother will also imitate the call of the sparrowhawk, so when it flies into the forest, other small birds will be scared away by its shape and call, at this time it can put its eggs into the nest with honor.
Then the second question is, why can't those birds tell their eggs? This is also because the cuckoo bird has done tricks on its own eggs, and in order not to let other birds notice the abnormality, the cuckoo bird has evolved to produce eggs of various shapes to imitate different hosts, including white with stripes, blue with markings, dark blue, light blue or pink, as if by magic, this ability is very rare even if you look at all creatures.
However, this is not to say that a cuckoo bird can produce eggs of different colors at any time, usually a cuckoo bird chooses a fixed host. Specifically, when I was raised by what kind of adoptive parents I was a child, I would choose this bird as the adoptive parent of my children when I grew up, and I would also give birth to eggs of similar color to this bird, but this is only usual. Sometimes, cuckoo birds don't care about the color problem at all, see the nest on the egg, you give me the right one, nonsense is not so much, but not all birds are so thick, there are always some birds with a little intelligence will find cat greasy.
Sometimes these bird bullies will hit the nails, such as accidentally thrown into the nest of the eagle, and the cuckoo bird that is found can only kill itself. But there are also bird mothers although they found the abnormality of the cuckoo egg in time, but because of their small size, they can't kick the cuckoo bird's egg out, and can only choose to put the egg in the corner to make it difficult to hatch or directly give up the whole nest, can only say that the cuckoo bird is really a bird demon who specializes in destruction.
The above is today's content, if you like please help me like and share, and don't forget to follow me Oh, we will see you next time.