Pelicans can be regarded as old Internet celebrities in the animal world, and they have swept the human Internet with their unique ability to swallow everything with a big mouth. Friends who have seen the animated movie Finding Nemo must have an impression of the big water bird with a huge mouth and a dumb look in the movie, its prototype is the pelican, what interesting animal new knowledge does the pelican have? And listen to me slowly.
Animated film Finding Nemo
Pelican He has big eyes and a big mouth that can swallow everything, which is a very recognizable face. You can see that the pelican is like many birds, it is actually toothless, so when it encounters other animals, whether it is small fish, seagulls or cats and dogs, it wants to open his own mouth and swallow, and often makes some self-measured actions.
In fact, from the side, we look at the Pelicans, his meeting, that is, his mouth is indeed very long, but if I want to say that he has a big mouth, I have to correct everyone. Strictly speaking, what really shapes the image of the pelican's big mouth is the large pocket attached to the lower jaw, this large pocket is called the laryngeal sac, which is composed of epithelial tissue, extremely elastic, stretching and extending from the tip of the lower jaw, and even reaching the lower end of the pelican's slender neck, the capacity of the laryngeal sac is more than twice the capacity inside the pelican, because no other bird can open and close the mouth up and down, so the pelican throat sac plays a huge role in the predation process.
Pelicans are collective hunting creatures, when groups of pelicans find schools of fish, they will form a semi-circle array to outflank, slap the surface with their wings, first drive the fish into shallow water, and then it's time for the pelicans to feast, they open their huge mouths and pour a lot of water, use the throat pouch to contract and squeeze out the water, and the rest is to enjoy the delicious food in the sac.
Teamwork is also a common fishing strategy, although this will vary slightly depending on the species and location, another way to hunt pelicans is relatively simple and rough, such as brown pelicans they will hover over the surface of the water, when they see underwater fish gathered together, they will retract their wings and dive headlong to the surface, this almost crazy predation will allow pelicans to eat fish living in deeper waters.
The pelican's huge laryngeal pouch not only fills its stomach, but also plays an important role in brooding.
The hatching and brooding tasks of the little pelicans are shared by the pelican's parents, and the parents of the pelicans will protect their semi-digested food in the nest for the little pelicans to eat, and bring the pelicans to grow up and put their heads into the huge throat pouches of their parents to feed. Just like when we were young, we would often rummage through our parents' clothes and want to get candy to eat.
Pelican this cute creature is actually not far away from us, it is widely distributed in the world, there are three kinds of pelicans on the mainland, namely white pelicans, spot-billed pelicans and curly-feathered pelicans, curly-feathered pelicans are still giants in this family, their adult body length can reach 1.6 meters to 1.8 meters, wings spread more than 3 meters, even in the entire bird tank family, curly-feathered pelicans are out-and-out behemoths, can be compared with birds of prey.
Curly-feathered pelicans like to live in the wetland area of the mainland, their requirements for the living environment are very high, to some extent, the curly-feathered pelicans can be regarded as experts in the identification of water quality, if the environmental pollution is more serious, this kind of environmental adaptability of large water birds is difficult to survive, wetland degradation and environmental pollution undoubtedly become a huge threat to them.
The spot-billed pelican is also threatened, and when it comes to bird protection, what can we ordinary people do for bird protection? This is a picture taken in a national park in Kenya, a group of wild pelicans are playing and resting, but one of the pelicans is a little wrong, his mouth is stuck with a plastic cup, I don't know how long he is stuck, I don't know if the poor pelican can take it off, this pelican it needs to fly with this plastic cup to hunt, rest, this cup undoubtedly brings him a huge burden, and even endangers his life.
A plastic cup was stuck in the mouth
We have no way of knowing where this plastic cup comes from, we only know that the harm of plastic can not be ignored, we all live on this blue planet, in order to maintain our beautiful planet, as far as possible to reduce plastic bags, disposable tableware plastic products, do not be kind, starting from me, this is we can make a small contribution to the environment for birds. That's the big mouth pelican I shared, I hope you enjoy it.