Have you ever heard of birds that are often "drunk" and "drunk" and hang upside down on trees or fall directly from trees?
In New Zealand, there is such a magical bird, called the New Zealand wooden pigeon, known as the "drunk of birds".
Don't look at this bird as silly, but in the 2018 New Zealand Best Bird Competition, the New Zealand wooden pigeon also won the competition, which shows that it is still very popular.
So at this time, there must be friends who want to ask: how did they get alcohol? Is it flying to someone's house or wine cellar to steal alcohol?
Don't worry, before answering this question for everyone, let's briefly understand the New Zealand wood pigeon.
New Zealand wood pigeons
New Zealand wooden pigeons, as the name suggests, they belong to a kind of pigeons, but they have a special feature, that is, their size is much larger than ordinary pigeons, their length is about 0.5 meters, the weight can reach more than 600 grams, some can even reach more than 800 grams, in the pigeon family belongs to the "big man".
In addition to their large size, the "appearance" of New Zealand wood pigeons is also very prominent and dazzling among pigeons, they have golden-green, gold and brown feathers, their wings will also have red feathers, and there will be white feathers on the chest, which looks very beautiful and noble.
Drunk among birds
Next, we should talk about the problem of New Zealand wood pigeons "alcoholism", the wine they drink is not stolen from human homes, but "brewed" by themselves!
New Zealand wood pigeons usually eat leaves, buds and fruits, they especially love to eat fruits, especially the kind of ripe fruit that is close to decay, it can be said that it is deep in the heart of New Zealand wood pigeons.
And looking at their round bodies, you can know that they eat a lot of food, and they have to fly around the trees every day to find a lot of fruits to eat.
These ripe fruits that are close to decay, themselves are already fermenting, will produce a certain amount of alcohol, everyone should have this experience in daily life: the rotten fruits at home will permeate a strong smell of alcohol. Then the New Zealand wood pigeon ingested a large amount of this fruit, which naturally means a certain amount of alcohol.
In addition, more importantly, every time the New Zealand wood pigeon is full of food and drink, it will lazily and leisurely bask in the sun in the tree, enjoying the sun while digesting the food in the stomach.
For this process, some related biologists explained: glucose in fruits produces pyruvate through the sugar alcohol fermentation pathway, ethanol is produced in the anaerobic pathway, and in the case of receiving solar sunshine, the rise in temperature accelerates the fermentation of food in the stomach, and the alcohol produced after fermentation will make New Zealand wood pigeons produce a dizzy state and do not know the northwest, just like people drink too much.
At this time, the New Zealand wooden pigeon gradually found it difficult to control the balance of its body, and could only rely on instinct, hooking the branches on the tree with their paws and shaking left and right on it, some of the wooden pigeons that were too drunk could not even catch the branches, and directly "plopped" and fell to the ground.
After falling to the ground, they will not wake up, go up to touch it, tease it and do not respond, still "huffing and sleeping", if not for body temperature and heartbeat, really make people wonder if it died suddenly.
Picking it up and returning home can lead to jail
So when you see a drunken wooden pigeon falling on the ground, can you take it home and make a delicious and nutritious "pigeon soup"?
If you do, congratulations: You'll spend a few years in jail and face hundreds of thousands in fines.
This is no joke, after all, there was a precedent in New Zealand, someone who wanted to try the taste of wooden pigeons was sentenced to 2 years in prison and fined 400,000.
Everyone may think strange, pick up a drunken pigeon and go home, the consequences can be so serious?
Indeed, think about the consequences of treating giant pandas like this in China? Although the New Zealand wooden pigeon cannot be called a national treasure of New Zealand, it is indeed a national protected animal and plays an important role in the local ecological chain of New Zealand.
Generally speaking, after birds swallow the fruit, the outer protective shell of the fruit will be digested in the stomach of the bird, and when the bird is excreting, the seed that the fruit can germinate will be excreted on the ground, allowing it to naturally take root and germinate.
Many native plants in New Zealand have large seeds, such as Karaka, Milo, Jonan, Tawa and other plants, which are an important part of New Zealand's coastal forests, but their fruit-like birds cannot swallow them at all, and can only peck and cannot help them disperse seeds.
At this time, we can only rely on our large, well-fed wooden pigeon, which can swallow these fruits in one gulp and help spread their seeds to distant places.
The survival of wooden pigeons is not optimistic
It is precisely because the wooden pigeon is a protected animal in New Zealand, and the wooden pigeon has played a great role in the ecological environment and ecosystem of the entire country, so New Zealanders are very friendly to the wooden pigeon, every time they find them falling on the ground, they will pick them up and help them "sober up", and then put them back on the tree after their consciousness is almost restored.
However, although humans are not the enemies of New Zealand wooden pigeons, this does not mean that their living environment is absolutely safe, because there are still many animals "eyeing" them, facing the falling wooden pigeon, these animals will only treat them as a "free lunch".
These animals are mainly rodents, basically some exotic species, such as wild cats, stoats, opossums, etc., these animals to the threat of New Zealand wood pigeons have also greatly damaged the New Zealand ecosystem.
In addition to "picking up corpses" wooden pigeons, some will climb trees to hunt eggs laid by New Zealand wooden pigeons or hatched cubs, and the reproductive ability of wooden pigeons is not strong, each breeding only produces one egg, and it takes almost a month to hatch an egg.
This means that once their population plummets, it is still very difficult to recover, so people have also increased the protection of wooden pigeons.
In many places in New Zealand, special wooden pigeon rescue institutions have been opened, and if people encounter "drunk and unconscious" wooden pigeons on the road, they will send it to the corresponding rescue agency to prevent being taken away and eaten by some animals.
Write at the end
In short, under the protection of the government and people, the New Zealand wood pigeon is not at risk of extinction for the time being, and their practice is also worth learning and emulating, after all, in our country and many other parts of the world, many animals are threatened with extinction by man, not other objective reasons.
Author: Arbor
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