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Text: Vientiane hardcore
Edited by Vientiane hardcore
«——【Preamble】】 ——»
In April 2019, the global network reprinted a report from the British "Daily Mail", an American documentary "Planet in Distress" recorded a very incredible bird.
The bird chooses to nest on extremely high cliffs, and about 1 to 3 days after birth, the young will jump off the cliffs at the call of their parents.
And the chick who jumped off the cliff in the documentary was only 1 day old.
Jumping from such a high place, could it be that these young birds are born with some kind of life-saving skill?
No, no, they, like ordinary birds, are not born with the ability to fly, and there is no special "armor" that guarantees that they will not fall to their death if they jump off a cliff.
As for whether they can survive or not, it basically depends on their lives, when they are lucky, half of these chicks can survive for a month, and if they are unlucky, a large part of them will fall to their deaths in the process of jumping off the cliff.
What's going on? Is there something wrong with this bird?
«—[Young birds born to face the test of life and death·]—»
Nature is cruel, and if you want to survive, you have to rely on your own ability.
This existential bird, known as the white-cheeked black goose, is a cold-water marine bird that generally feeds on a variety of plants, and aquatic life is one of their favorite dishes.
The white-cheeked black goose is not a very ferocious bird, and it does not have any strong attack ability, so there are many natural predators, and it will become a "meal on the plate" of carnivores at every turn.
In order to ensure that the young birds will not be "wiped out" during the hatching process, the white-cheeked black goose thought of a safer method: build the nest on the cliff.
During the period when the female incubates her eggs, she does not leave her young, while the male is responsible for preying and bringing it back to feed the female.
There are relatively few predators near the cliffs, and predators often struggle to survive in such places, so all the white-cheeked black goose chicks hatch in this relatively safe environment.
I thought that this was the end of it, but I have to say that this bird is quite smart, and in order to protect its children, it came up with this method.
Most birds go out to forage after hatching their young, and then bring back the food to feed the young.
Adults will only leave after the young birds have the ability to fly and hunt, but there is also a more troublesome part of this, that is, many birds do not raise their young together with a male and female.
When the mother bird goes out to forage, the nestlings in the nest are easy to encounter accidents, at this time they are not able to fly, they have no ability to resist, and can only be slaughtered by other natural predators.
The young birds that have worked hard to feed are sometimes even "wiped out", leaving the female bird in the nest "sad".
To avoid this, the white-cheeked geese do not bring food back to nurse their youngs after birth, but instead encourage them to fly down cliffs to forage for food.
Young white-cheeked geese will starve to death if they don't eat within 36 hours of birth, so mothers encourage their children to jump off cliffs during this time.
Of course, before encouraging the children to jump off the cliff, the mother white-cheeked black goose will fly back and forth between the nest and the bottom of the cliff several times to gauge the speed and direction of the wind, and will check for any predators moving at the bottom of the cliff.
Once it's sure everything is right, it starts encouraging its children to "jump off the cliff" as soon as possible.
First of all, the mother of the white-cheeked black goose will fly down the cliff by herself, and then attract her children with her cry at the bottom of the cliff, and the chick that hears the call will jump off the cliff with the mother's figure after hesitating.
Mateo Willis, the director of the documentary, said that the rocks on the cliffs where the film was filmed were unstable, and that the rocks in this place were often like dominoes because of the perennial glacial erosion.
The three chicks, who are only one day old, will follow their mother's example, first approaching the edge of the cliff, and then spreading their little furry wings and spreading their bodies as much as possible in order to gain more air resistance.
Even so, the cliff jumping process is fraught with ever-present dangers. Since the wings of the young birds are not really functional yet, it looks more like they are doing freefall.
When these chicks jump, most of them hit the hard rocks hard, and then some of them struggle and then stay motionless, and the photographer can even hear them hitting the rocks.
According to Bear Grylls, the narrator of the documentary, only about half of these cliff-top chicks survive one month.
After a month has passed, these chicks will gradually learn to fly, and then they will be able to face the cruelty of life.
The filming location is also 1.6 kilometers away from the nearest meadow, and after the chicks that have not been killed come to the bottom of the cliff, the adult white-cheeked black geese will take them to "trek through mountains and rivers" to feed.
1.6 km may not be a big animal, but it can be a challenge for a young bird that is only 1 day old and can't fly.
It's rare to see a bird like the white-cheeked goose that has to stand tall in the sky after a day, but this is also their unique survival strategy, using their nature to carry out "natural selection", in a sense, it is not much different from being caught by predators.
And the parents of the white-cheeked black goose who watched their child fall to death did not even have time to be happy or sad, so they had to hurry away with their surviving and perhaps somewhat dizzy children.
Otherwise, they will be very likely to be exposed to predators, and if such a situation happens, there is no way for the parents of white-cheeked black geese to save their children.
And director Matteo Willis has said that when he saw this scene, he sincerely hoped that they would succeed.
If some chicks are killed in the process, you can't help but feel sad.
According to his account, the white-cheeked black goose couple watched their first child jump off, and just as it was struggling to get up after it landed, a crow flew over and snatched it away.
The mother goose pounced to save her child, but she was unable to recover, and the crow flapped its wings and flew away.
When the second and the child jumped down, the wind blew onto the top of the cliff rock, and it lost control and finally rolled down behind the rock, and there was no movement.
It's a pity that it didn't get the favor of the heavens, so it fell to its death.
At this time, the last young bird was left on the cliff, and it finally jumped down at the call of its mother, however, after several impacts, the young bird was also bounced up, and fell down again and again, and kept tumbling, which looked very worrying.
The mother goose rushed to her baby's side, but she couldn't stop the baby from falling and rolling, and eventually, the third bird struggled to get to its feet after several rolls.
In this way, the last young bird escaped the layers of rocks and reached the ground, which was surprising and bitter at the same time.
Nature is cruel, and this cruelty begins to play out as soon as the white-cheeked black goose is born, and many young birds do not even see the sun born the next day.
But from the perspective of species continuity, this trick is still effective, and the white-cheeked black goose with "no power to restrain the chicken" wants to survive and has to pay a greater price.
The surviving chicks must be fed within 36 hours, so the parents of the white-cheeked geese do not dare to delay at all, and must take the children to the grass or to the river without stopping.
Luckily, despite the fact that the call of the white-cheeked goose attracted many predators to stay nearby, the parents managed to escape with their only surviving child and make it to the river.
In the days that followed, the couple would raise their only cub together until it was grown.
They are monogamous for life and generally do not leave each other at will, and the way they raise their young is relatively simple and rude, that is, the young birds must learn to forage for food on their own.
Once the chicks reach adulthood, they will still live together for a period of time until the next breeding season, when the parents and children are separated.
Although the white-cheeked black goose's survival strategy seems to be very cruel, it is still at the "no danger" level, and it seems that it may be useful to be ruthless with itself.
Reference:
Global Network "Thrilling! Just One Day Born, Little Black Goose Jumped Off the Cliff for Survival"2019-4-28