A Brief History of Birds!

Stephen Hawking. There are a lot of secrets that birds are hiding in their evolutionary history, and we have to go all the way back to dinosaur times to find them. Are there secretly still dinosaurs lurking among us? How did birds learn how to fly? Why did some birds decide to be so small? Discover this and more as we answer the asual questions is birds dinosaurs? Joining me today is podcast writer in our fabulous producer, Joel Monique. Hey, guys,

what's up. It's so good to have you back on Joel. Thank you, it's nice to be back. I am jealous listening to you talk to all of these people, and I always want to chain in and I'm like, this is not your show. Take a step back. You should we gotta, we should have you on a hot mike at all times. Oh my god, I love that. It's just gonna be me being like it could really do that?

What honestly, honestly, now that you say that, let's do it. Okay, you're not like all the time, as long as you're not too stressed about it, I'm here for well, speaking of stress. So I am sorry to do this to you today. We're talking about birth. I should have known the betrayal. Okay, all right, put on my brave hat and we're just gonna get through this. Put on your brave hat. So you know, Joel, you do have a

fear of birth. I do know this. I'm not here to torture you, Okay, I want to basically, well, I want to validate your fear while also maybe helping you be less afraid. Does that make sense. I don't know how you're going to do both, but I look forward to the validating part so that I can blast it for my brothers and be like, listen, here's a really

good reason that you should be afraid of birds, right right? Yeah, Because I think when most people here are like, you're afraid of birds, it's like, well, how can you be afraid of birds? But I think that it now I'm speaking as someone who absolutely loves birds. They're like my favorite kind of animal. But I do understand your fear.

I do think it's valid. Would it surprise you and everyone listening out there to hear that dinosaurs did not die out and they are currently alive and well because they're birds and I know that, and that's why I'm afraid of birds. Listen, here's my theory on birds. I know they have small brains, but some birds have memory, some birds hold grudges, all those all birds have claws and the advantage of flight. Listen, if these guys ever got together and we're like, listen, we got it next

to human race. Look at them. They're killing our trees and I like resources for living. They could absolutely take us out. They have all of the advantages, and most people aren't afraid of them. It's they're honestly the best predators. It's horrifying, and they're all around us. They are smarter, better dinosaurs, and I mean, that's why I personally liked them, and I welcome the bird revolution. I for one, will welcome our bird overlords with open arms or should I

say open wings? But yes, I mean those are all valid reasons to respect, and I suppose fear the birds. So the general consensus amongst evolutionary biologists is that birds are literally dinosaurs, not like, oh, they're like they're living dinosaurs. No, they are actually dinosaurs, just like snakes are reptiles or humans are mammals, and they are the only living dinosaurs in the world, which is something I mean, like, you know, Jurassic Park is basically going to the zoo and going

into the aviary, which is you know whatifying. So I love birds, I get anxious when I go to the aviary, not because I'm scared of the birds, but I feel like the chance I'm going to get pooped on is almost a percent. I am both afraid of birds and claustrophobic,

which makes the aviary my nightmare. Scenaria swarms right, like swarms of things and they're all just around it all like the Leaguing Park Zoo in Chicago, which was the zoo I went to the most as like a child has an open aviary, so like it's an enclosed space and then there's like chicken wire that's sort of over a bridge that you can walk through. Other than that, it's just birds flapping overhead, very loud, and then when you exit, it's a giant, like I want to say,

twenty foot tall cage just the birds of prey. Yeah, it's like want of each bird of prey like a weird noise ar. It was the most traumatizing because it would be you could just close your eyes and you think that would be better, but when you close your eyes, you're just and you feel it was like moist and dark in there. It's not a pleasant experience. Now I actually do like it. I do like aviaries as long as I'm wearing a hat because I'm like, well, if I get put on, it's got to be on a hat.

I don't want to get that out of my hair. But yes, I imagine if you are afraid of birds, an aviary is perhaps you know, the seventh Circle of Hell similar. So I think it is a fascinating story of how dinosaurs turned into birds. And I think it is when you really look at a bird, I think you can kind of see, oh yeah, yeah that I can see how that's kind of a dinosaur like, but

it is. It's how it's kind of mind blowing to think about how these huge dinosaurs slowly turned into these little puff balls and why they would go from being these incredible, huge dino terrors roaming the earth to birds, like, why did that happen? So I want to talk about how dinosaurs turned into birds that and Joel, I think you will come from this feeling both validated and maybe hopefully. I don't know understanding birds and where they're coming from.

I would like to. I would like to understand. So birds came from a clade of dinosaurs called theropods, and they share a common ancestor with t Rex and velocerats, the big ones, the and the deadly ones, the okay, yeah, the scary ones from Jurassic Park. M M. So again point one for Joel, valid valid fear. And so they didn't I have heard things like they came from t Rex, like as in, they directly descended from t Rex. That's not quite true. It's that they both share a common ancestors,

so they're related. But they're like cousins. Okay, yes, that's very clear. They hang out during the summer, you know, but they're they're not living together. They don't have all the same jeans. They do holidays with each other, you know, catch up and uh yeah, I would it would be fun. I have wonderful cousins. I don't want to diss my cousins. They're great. I would love one of them to be

a t Rex, though. I mean the advantages when you go to the mall, that you're clearing out spaces right right, exactly like picking out you know, during holidays, picking out a tree, going to malls shop and like you know, you just like one whip of that huge tail knocks everyone out clear, clears a path. You're going to get straight to the front of the line. Cheesecake factory. It's probable. I see you have a t Rex with you. Well, we have the special table. It's called the whole restaurant.

Please do come in. I love it that Pus is not allowed to drink though he cannot. No, no, you can't drink while being a t Rex. It's just dangerous. Do you t do you t Rex? Yeah, that's not not allowed. It's just imagine joke. Rex. Let's backing through a ball. It's ridiculous. You know, he's got like a little beer bottle of his tittle close smashing it to the ground. But it looks really funny because those a

little tiny Yeah, that's amazing. So they did descend from probably somewhat bigger like dinosaurs that were bigger than most birds are today, certainly so around a hundred to five hundred pounds, with lots of teeth and definitely could not fly yet. But those were their common ancestors, were these big kind of like uh probably sort of uh, I don't know, raptor looking dinosaurs and you know, chunky, so you know not you know, that was their common ancestor

with things like t rex and velociraptors. So another misconception, though, is that birds descended from archaeopterics. Have you ever heard of archaeopters? I have not. So archaeopterics is a classic fossil of this dinosaur that is considered or used to be considered one of the earliest birds, the mega early bird, where it's this little raptor looking dinosaur with feathers. Do you want to describe what you're seeing here this picture? Okay?

I want you to imagine the feet of a chicken and the tail of a peacock, the wings of like a two can you know, but like blue and green instead of that bright red color. And then like a tiny velociraptor head and that's vehnm right, And so that's archaeopterics. We actually don't know what color it was. This is probably the artist's interpretation. This artist was just like, I don't make it a peacock. Why not? It could have been it could have been like jet black, like a

big raven. Actually they probably were raven sized. And there's some there's a lot of research about it, like trying to figure out what color it was. Some say like, oh, it was actually it shared properties of like uh, blackbirds and ravens, so like maybe it was jet black, but it's it's hard to say, like there's something like no, no, it had other colors. We don't really know. I like

to think of it as being really fancy, just peacock colored. Personally, I like the idea of Edgar Allen Poe knowing this and his raven was really this guy just a big gas dinosaur. Never more quoth the raven. It makes a

story much more fascinating. Read that right now. But that is but that is archaeopterics, and it and it was small, so about the size of a raven, which I mean I guess when I say small quote unquote ravens are pretty pretty hefty for birds, and they were around a hundred and fifty million years ago, so that's late Jurassic, about a foot long. The way I think of it is they kind of look like a road rudder, but with teeth and a very lizard looking face. That's a

very good description. Yeah, And it's like it's often considered this missing link between birds and dinosaurs, but it's also very possible and probably true that archaeopterics and birds shared a common ancestor. But archaeopterics was kind of this like volutionary pit stop two birds. I don't know, I don't think that there's like a definite consensus yet, Like it's always tricky trying to trace back fossil records and figure

out exactly how these evolutionary paths were. But yeah, certainly it was definitely at least a pit stop from dinosaurs to birds. I will say as somebody who has done some very minor studies on like the structure of animal bodies into fantasy creatures, like a specifically need like dragons, where some people really to test when dragons have four limbs, because they're like, that's not how science works. They're like you can have the wings instead of the arms, and

that would make it. And I'm looking at this guy and he has like wing arms, like he has like the little chicken fee as at the end of his wings, which makes me think about talents. Yeah, I'm trying to imagine him in combat like this one foot winged claw creature. I feel like, listen, chicken, it's are bad. I don't want to promote that, but if pay to see this guy, I would If this, if we could see two archaeopterics consenting to doing a wrestling match, yes, that would be

great for the first thing. First thing I'm going to do if I get a time machine and an ability to communicate with dinosaurs. Yeah, but I do love that, Like I mean, like, if you want to come up with an awesome dragon, just look at bird evolutionary history archaeopterics. You scale that thing up, maybe make it a little meteor, a little a little more buff like that, Like that

would be a terrifying dragon. And it does. It does have claws on its wings, and you can kind of imagine the wings folding and it kind of walking along on its claws with like the folded back wings. But then like unfolding them and being capable of flight. So there actually has been a lot of debate over like whether these guys flew, how they flew, Like what what's the deal? We obviously can't watch one of them work until Jeff Goldbloom or whoever it is clones. It wasn't

Jeff Goldbloom who did. It was the other guy. But you know, once they cloned dinosaurs, which they don't need to do again because we already have dinosaurs and they are birds, but they so there are theories that range from it being a glider to like so basically like a flying squirrel or something where it's like on a

branch and then it glides down to another branch. Uh. Some their eyes that it could have run on the ground and taken off from the ground, and then others are like, no, it wasn't strong enough, like it's flight muscles weren't strong enough to do that. Uh. There are recent studies that are like, oh, it was probably a burst flyer like pheasants and modern birds, that it's bone structure seems to be very similar to where basically it didn't fly a lot, but then it could use its

wings to evade predators. By these short bursts of flight up to tree branches, or by like gliding and like hopping from one branch to another and using its wings to basically be able to do these little bursts of like amplified jumping or or short flight to be able to escape predators. But yeah, so it's most of the theories suggest it was at least using those wings for something similar to flight, if not you know, full fledged flying.

I'd like to imagine that it just like to glide a lot, like it was just like a sugar glider, and instead of like just hopping to the ground, it's like I'm just gonna lazily, like, listen, I got these wings, no one else does. I'm just gonna enjoy gliding a little bit. Okay, I changed my mind. We do have

to clone these and I have to have one. Can you imagine being It'd be like being in falconry, but way way cooler and I love Look, I love falconry, But imagine this like your you have your your leathery gloved hand and then one of these things just lands on you and go listen. The Kalisi cosplay is about to get a huge transformation. Okay, that would be amazing. So how dinosaurs became birds again, it's like, well, how

it's see it's such a huge change. Is this something where it's like it happened in these really dramatic steps, a drastic mutation in these dinosaurs that somehow was useful and then that was like this huge leap and evolution. So that's actually called hopeful monster in evolutionary biology, which I feel like you would you would very much agree

with birds being hopeful monsters. But hopeful monster basically means you want, like, most significant mutations aren't going to be great, Like you have a mutation and like half of your body is gone or something, I'm not gonna work out so good for you in terms of evolution. But the hopeful monsters theory is that like if you once in a while you're gonna have a dramatic mutation ation that actually does help you. And so you're basically you're hopeful monster.

So you're a monster that's hoping that you're ridiculously horrific mutation actually works out for you. That is such an interesting concept. I want to apply it to humans and put it in a side. But they were talking about a lot of sci fi stuff today because that's sort of my corner of the world. But I really love the idea of us being hopeful monsters and what would our like major genetic change be. It doesn't decimate us as a species, Yeah, that would be it. I like

the idea that we're suddenly eight feet tall with claws. Okay, we are a true alphabetic. I don't know if keep seeing in person, but of course we have to paint our clause because that's who we are as humans right now. They actually have really long nails right now because like I haven't really had to do anything, so they've just been getting longer and longer practice for the next evolutionary

step exactly. The problem with the hopeful monster idea is that again, like most significant mutations will end up killing you basically, like they're not gonna be good. So it's very very rare that a really significant mutation that results in like a whole limb changing or falling off is gonna be good. So often the evolutionary change happens over these smaller changes over time. So it's like it's this balance of trying to find out, okay, well, was this

a big leap? Was this animal's parents significantly different from it, or was there like this little small incremental change. And the answer is like, sometimes it's these small changes. Sometimes it's like a bigger change that happened suddenly, and sometimes it's a mix of the two. So it's not it's definitely not always really clear, Like you don't have the smooth gradient of change for one animal to the next. Sometimes you do, and then it's interrupted by like a

big sudden change. Usually you wouldn't have like a bunch of big changes in a row because that's very unlikely. But still it's it's very it's it's complicated. So it's more likely that bird like features developed over millions of years, so feathers started to evolve in dinosaurs long before birds started to evolve. And I think this is something a lot of people are becoming aware of in terms of like, hey, our image of what a dinosaur looks like may not

be Jurassic Park. It maybe you know Old McDonald where you had a bunch of giant chickens running around. I remember for hearing about that and like late high school and being like, wait, what not lizards but birds? And then I was like, man, what does all that plumage look like and where they like when chickens you call it when birds shed their feathers MALTI yeah, are they like giant dinosaurs? Just malting? Probably sore feathers like blowing

in the wind. You could stuff a whole matt like imagine so if like t rex has had enough feathers, could stuff a whole mattress. You hold down mattress, have a t rex down comforter am I like with like a baby t rex. Oh, I bet that'd be soft, but yeah, it's a It's so reptiles share a common ancestor with dinosaurs, but they didn't evolve from dinosaurs and birds and reptiles have a common ancestor, but birds are dinosaurs. We have makes sense, yes, but I have some questions.

So reptiles alive during like the Trassic period area of the Drastic period, were dinosaurs or not dinosaurs? Is there an overlap? Yeah, there's like an overlap in terms of like they are share an ancestor, like they there were these proto reptile proto dinosaurs around and then those branch

off into dinosaurs and reptiles. There's like reptiles around during dinosaur times chilling out and then there's eventually dinosaurs turned into birds, so prehistoric gaiters just reptiles, not dinosaurs crocodiles. That changes my whole idea. I was just like all dinosaurs, dinosaurs, everything that lived back disa because there were also there were mammals around during dinosaur times. It's true. Actually, I'm not sure there were whales when dinosaurs were around, because like,

whales actually were terrestrial mammals that went back into the water. What. So, Yeah, whales started out as these kind of like weird, little horse like animals, and then these little horse like animals turned into these sort of semi aquatic predator like animals that were like almost like mammalian alligators. It was really weird. And then those those turned into whales. Okay, it's super weird. What a journey whales have been on. Now I'm trying

to imagine horses turning into wales. It's like a horse, it's not a whale, it's a swimming creature. What but it has no legs, and so it's where does it's fin go? Oh my god, I please somebody draw me a horse turning into a whale like creature and not losing its color. I would like it to remain it's velvet brown, please, and it's a tail in a mane, but like its legs are flippers. Yes, I think I've seen drawings of that, like like like sort of mermaid horses.

It reminds me of a pokemon, but I can't remember which one. It's blue and it's got like a shell, but it's like a dinosaur neck. Oh man, some of you are like, it's this thing. Um yeah, but so many angry nerves so sorry you guys. Feel free to tweet me about it. Uh yeah, it would be really cool, right to be angry. Yeah, I would. I would love to have one as a pet and then we would swim together and it would be amazing. You can have that,

I can have the archaeopterics and we will be so happy. So, in terms of dinosaurs evolving into birds, like one of the big things is like, okay, how did they get so small and able? Basically going from being these big terrestrial animals to being able to fly and being small enough to fly some of them and birds skeletal structure actually looks a lot like embryonic dinosaurs, so it wasn't really that hard for birds to use dino d n A that already had these structures in their embryos to

scale down and become more efficient for flying. So basically, these there's a theory that dinosaurs, these mutations were basically making the dinosaurs more and more immature. So birds are like little baby dinosaurs flap it around. That's so cute. Okay, listen as terrifying anything. Fruits are, it's really cute. They're just like and they it's like they did to themselves

what we did to dogs. We were like, makes them very tiny, as we can keep them in our baths like we need to be, so we can evade danger wall with themselves. It's so freaking cute. And I think typically when we think of like smaller animals, we think of them as being more in danger, like less able to protect themselves. So that's very strange. Well, the reason they came smaller is it actually helps them to fit

into a certain evolutionary niche. So if you're a big animal, like a big predator like t rex, you may think, well, that's the optimal thing. They're all dead now because they had to eat so much meat and they you know, basically it's not easy to be a predator. It's really hard to be a predator. You have to eat a bunch of meat if your hunt doesn't go well, if your prey is evolving to avoid you better. If something happens to the climate, for instance, or a big cataclysmic

event where you can't find food, you're doomed. If you're small and you can get into this niche that's not being used like trees, and you're able to go after something very abundant like insects, you're actually much more likely to survive, even if some of you get eaten as a snack. But again, you're small and you're starting to get more agile. You can actually start to fly and glide it like the archaeopterics. You're able to evade predators.

You're becoming way more successful than a t rex ever could be by getting smaller, by scaling down, And basically you're like, yeah, I'm not a big barbarian, I'm a little rogue. I'm a little ninja like I basically can get through this evolutionary dungeon no problem. No matter what I roll on stealth, I'm gonna win. Okay, that is way cool and it makes a lot of sense to again, I have such an elementary understanding of like the dinosaurs

and what happened. We studied that in third grade and then no one thought it was important for me to talk about it again, and so I understand it was like giant comic cons is dead. It makes much more sight that it's like, well, then their food supply was changed, and then yeah, the weather it was a little different. And it's the actual impact of the comment isn't really

what killed them. It's it was the change in their environment and climate and just not like basic it's it's sad, but yeah, like slowly you know, dying off and and starving or you know, just not you know, yeah, it's a I think that's one of the things like when we talk when we think about big cataclysmic events like a like a meteor strike or global warming or even like a nuclear disaster, we think, Okay, that's it. It's binary, We're done. It's like no, like we'd still be around.

We'd have to find a way to survive and evolve or else we're gonna be like dinosaur. Essentially, if we end up curing my fear birds today, I will leave with a healthy new fear of comets our world, so sudden technically a meteor once you get your atmosphere meteor. So the other big change from dinosaurs to bird is pretty obvious. They don't have teeth anymore, right, so why did they lose their teeth in favor of a beak?

So some birds, especially aquatic birds, do have toothlike structures in their beak, which are called denticles, but these aren't real teeth in the sense that dinosaurs had them. So the teeth did go away, and in some forms like they re evolved these kind of like denticles or whatever. But yeah, so like, why it seems like teeth you would want It seems like it's pretty pretty good good thing to have no reason to really get rid of that. But recent research suggests that it has to do with

egg incubation time. So the development of teeth in the egg is estimated to have taken up sixty of egg development time. And dinosaurs, so you get rid of the teeth, you have a much more limited amount of time in that very delicate, vulnerable egg where anyone can turn you into an omelet, and more time getting out in the world, spreading your jeans, doing bird stuff and hopefully, you know,

maturing to adulthood and passing on your jeans. So it was a trade off of do I want to spend all this time as a little delicious egg growing these teeth or ditch the teeth, you know. I like the idea that spending six of their time just growing teeth. I actually that means they had many sets of teeth and they were falling out. That is horrifying. I six in imbryo on teeth. I don't think of babies is having teeth. Maybe the teeth is very scary. You're like,

that's not right. You're supposed to just be all gun out there, little dinosaur embryos just working really hard, like doing like out. I'm imagining dinosaurs with giant dentri sized teeth, like he's way too large through their mouth and their babies and they're just chomp chomp, chop, chop chomp. It's very cute. So reptiles, well, it's the deal with reptiles. You may have heard that dinosaurs are reptiles, birds are reptiles,

or that reptiles came from dinosaurs, and it gets pretty confusing. Honestly, that's because reptiles is a kind of outdated classification and one that's gone through some changes over the years. It used to just mean anything scaly and cold blooded, that is, having to regulate its blood temperature by using its environment. Then we started to pay more attention to phylogeny, that is, evolutionary his Street in categorizing animals, not just using their characteristics.

Modern day reptiles such as crocodiles, lizards, snakes, and turtles did not evolve from dinosaurs. They evolved from an early reptilian ancestor. In fact, so did mammals. Mammals, lizards, snakes, crocodiles, turtles, dinosaurs, and birds are all classes of animals who share a

common stem reptile ancestor. Imagine a tree branching off where you start with a small early reptile creature with a branch leading to mammals, a branch leading to turtles, a branch leading to and diverging into both snakes and lizards, and then there's the most awesome branch of all, the one that leads to arcosaurs, which split into crocodiles and dinosaurs,

and those dinosaurs became birds. So when people talk about birds or dinosaurs being reptiles, really they mean they both descended from early reptile ancestors, but honestly, so did us mammals, so maybe it's a bit of a strange categorization. Birds today are most closely related to crocodiles, who were cousins both to ye oldie dinosaurs and to our modern day dinosaur birdies. Does any of this sound confusing, don't feel bad.

It's really difficult to untangle the evolutionary tree, and researchers are often finding out new discoveries that helped prune some of these tangled branches. When we return, we're going to take a look at some real living birds who don't want us to forget that they're dinosaurs. So what was the earliest bird of all time that we know of? Almost sixty seven million years ago roamed the wonder chicken. Wonder chicken was about the size of a seagull, had a head like a chicken, a body like a duck,

and long legs like a shore bird. It's the oldest fossil record that we have of birds. Unfortunately, wonder chicken is now extinct, but we still have birds alive and pecking today who have some really interesting characteristics that remind us, Hey,

they're dinosaurs. So, Joel, now that we know a little bit more about the evolution of birds from sort of the standard dinosaurs to the dinosaurs that they are now, the bird bird dinosaurs, I want to talk about some birds that are alive right now that remind us that they're dinosaurs. Okay, Yes, let's hear about the terrifying birds of today. Yes, I'm sure you're going to love this. Second. AM going to be more prepared when I see a horrifying bird, and I can tell people why they need

to be afraid when they're like, hal down, it's just bird. Yes. So first I want to talk about a bird who may not, by its appearance, remind you exactly of a dinosaur, but it has one of the oldest fossil records of extant which means living bird species. So this is the sand hill crane, which is found in North American wetlands. It's also found in northeastern Siberia, which sounds weird until you actually look at a world map and see how close they are, like on the globe, it's like, oh,

they're almost kissing those continents. They were probably crossing back and forth before or or migrating over over the water potentially. Yeah. OK. So their definite fossil record stretches back at least two point five million years ago, which is the oldest fossil record we have of living bird species. That doesn't mean they are the oldest living species of birds. It just

means that they have the oldest fossil record. So that could have something to do with, like say, their environment, like maybe wetlands preserved fossils better and that's why we have them. So we don't know like that they are the oldest living species of birth, just that we have the best records of them. There's also a ten million year old fossil that maybe a sandhill crane, although we're

not exactly sure. There's some debate whether it's like an older ancestral species or whether it's the sandhill crane, but it could be. There could that which blows like we have these birds walks strutting around that could be ten million years old, which is a lot to think about and maybe wouldn't have changed that much. It looks like, wow, this is cool. I looked up the ten million year old fossil because they wanted to see it. That is

so cool. It's like fossils are wild because obviously bones shift as they're being compressed, and so it's not always like a perfect outline. This guy's feet are kind of jinkie. They seem to be like placed one over the other, but you can see it. He was doing a cool dance move when he died. It's like, I'm going to be immortal, mortal through depths. But you can definitely see like the crane like structure, and that's the crazy part. Yeah, what's interesting. So I'm gonna put on my conspiracy hat

a little bit here. Get get it on, Get on that tinfoil. The Sandhill crane is the prime candidate for who the Mothman sightings might be. So, uh, you know Mothman and that whole thing in North America where people see Mothman and he's well, he's a Mothman. He's a man who looks like he's like half moth or something, and he's the sightings that they report of having these red eyes and like this weird body and being really

tall and lanky. It's thought that it's probably maybe We actually talked about this in an earlier episode that I did with the Nightcall Ladies. It could be that it's these sandhill cranes that in their heads they have this red coloration on top of their heads, so they look like you know how you imagine a crane or stork to look, but then they have these this like red coloration. So people who are like, oh, the mothman, he has

these big red eyes. If you imagine like a hunched over crane where its neck isn't sticking out and it's like standing kind of upright, it could look very human like, yeah, because it's got that those bulky wings which can easily be shoulders. If you're seeing it in like silhouette form, it's late night. I got a lot of the Mothman stuff on the bridge on a bridge in Jersey. Uh So if he was just chilling on like a guard rail, you can see that he's like, what is this thing

with youant red eyes looking at me? Darkness right. The sort of scientific explanation is that the sandhill crane, it's bigger than you would necessarily expect a bird to be, and if one of them kind of strayed from its normal migratory path and you're not used to sing sandhill cranes and you see this bird, but its neck is kind of tucked in and its wings are out, and it looks like it has these big red eyes. You'd be like, oh, it's a mothman and we have to go.

Or here's here's the conspiracy time. This is a ten million year old beast that's behind everything. Oh my god, it's the Illuminati. Okay, it's coming for you and your children, yourself. Other mothman mythology is like, oh, mothman always shows up before disaster. Oh well, this is ten million years old. It was behind like everything. This is what led to global warm Pompeii. Everything global warming is because of this global warming. Yep, yep. The one people who could stop him.

Humans are gonna die. Oh my gosh. But if you want to see the dinosaur in birds, all you have to do is look at baby birds of a lot of different bird species and you can see. You're like, oh, yeah, they're dinosaurs, right. Why didn't we see this earlier? So probably because baby birds and fledglings have less developed feathers, so like they're not puffy and you can see their skin and stuff. It's like with our illustrations of dinosaurs

and our popular idea of what they look like. They're kind of shrink wrapped where we like all right, even if they had feathers that was maybe just a few of them. We don't think of them as being puffy and like filled out like a bird is, although they could have been. They could have had more feathers and been more fluffy, which I think is adorable. But when you look at a baby bird, they look like dinosaurs,

especially species like blue herons. So if you dare take a look at that picture of that baby blue heron, I think, listen, it's cute. I can't deny it. It's super cute. It's got a very long neck, and it looks like it's making this sound. It's like a cry slash, like primal scream. It is like it's a little feathers. It's cute. It is cute, But it looks like a little dinosaur, right, totally, absolutely, it's a d little dinosaur, I mean that is what it is. But so these

are found in North American wet lambs. They eat fish, and you know, if you live in North America, you may have seen an adult blue hair and they're those very elegant birds with the long necks and long beaks. They have that like one little frond of black feather coming off of their heads. But and so when you look at that, it's you know, kind of elegant, and so you think it doesn't you know, it doesn't look super like a dinosaur like again, it's all filled out

with feathers. They look like a more refined pelican that Hellicanuh, is that the pink one? What's the pink one? Lam the kind of flamingo like. They're very long and tall and they see a leg. Yeah, totally, but not all dinosaur like. But their baby, they're so squat And is this this little black and white guy one of those two that is Actually this is so cute to me, But this is a baby Southern ground hornbill found in Southern Africa, so in Kenya and South Africa, And it

looks like a little dinosaur alien to me. It looks, you know, for some reason, it's giving me Lelo and Stitch vibes. I know, it doesn't really it doesn't look like Stitch himself, but it looks like artwork that would have come from that movie. It has the attitude of Stitch. One leg popped out, head cocked to the side. This bird is giving you sass. It's not taking your bs armacambo arm on hip or little wing on him, and it is just like, yeah, I'm a dinosaur. What about it?

You are going to listen to and respect this baby bird. Okay, she's got it going on. I love this, horrifies me. It's suff of nightmares, but also cute, you know, winning me over. I see what your game is now. This this is the thing. I think. Instead of telling you you should not be afraid of birds, they're not scary, I should be saying, yes, they're scary. That's what's so cool about them. They are terrifying little dinosaurs and adorable and yes, if they could kill us all, they probably would.

But the fact that they don't adorable, I see the appeal. They're very charming. So the adult ground hornbill very different. No, that's when I filled out with feathers. It's jet black, it's got a long beak, and it's I imagine the part that you're not super into is that red kind of gold or pouch wattle. Swallowed a heart and half of it fell out, and it's still beating in its throat and maybe the heart like the ventricles from the heart to wrap up around his eye, and they're much

something out of a Mary Shelley book. I can't actually argue with that. And they can live to be up to sixty years old and well up to two ft tall. Well, if it's only two be tall, I can kick it, so that's good. I wouldn't. I don't like to harm animals. I wouldn't kick it. But if I felt it was attacking me, you could. It's it's hypothetically possible your morals hold you back, but knowing that you could brings you some comfort. I understand that. I like to call these

guys swoll Zazoo because they are hornbills. This does look like Zazi's older, much more like Tuck. Zassi thinks he's everything because he's got like access to the palace, and this guy is like, okay, well I run the streets, so what are we doing? Really? Yeah, he's just like he shows He's like Zazo's cousin who shows up and he's like, what's up. I've got like a bunch of beer, bunch of bruskies. We're gonna put the game on. It's a very come at me bro bird, I think, And

it's it's great. It'd be like, it'd be a great foil for Zazo who's very like, Oh I'm an efficient little right. That's not really Zozie's voice, is it? No, that at all. He's got to you know, I'm here to shave from lay on High, isn't it. Im I'm going to save the Kingdom on I I like, uh, not John Stewart, but the other John British, John Oliver does the British. Yeah, he dosas his voice on the Lion King live action movie, and uh, it's it's pretty special.

It's one of my favorite performances from the live action movie because he's he really channels his inner brit It's pretty special. Yes, But then this is like, I don't know, I don't know what what what's like the swoll British Like, I don't know anything from a Guy Ritchie movie you need. This is a Guy Ritchie version of Zas. We did it. We solved it. Yeah, we did it. We did it. We got there. It took a while, but we got there.

So these these hornbills can fly, but they mostly hunt on the ground and their carnivores, so you know, on the ground where you live and walk Okay, I'm just saying they could be up in the sky and finding other sky demons, but no on turf. Yes, rude. So now I want to talk about a bird who looks like it came out of a Jurassic Park movie slash science fiction slash fantasy movie. And it's called a Watson. Get us scrolled down a little bit, closing my center yourself,

take a deep breath. Okay, you guys, you need to know. It has red eyes and orange mohawk and bright red wings, but like black and yellow tail feathers, which, to me um a casual purveyor of nature, says danger and warning. Okay, we get black and yellows and reds like this that's like I'm poisonous. Don't eat me. I will destroy you. Also has like weird highlight feathers on its neck that make it look very angry. I'm not messed with it.

It's got it's got a bit of the speak to the manager hair, because I was gonna say it has a care and hair, got a car and hair. And this this image that you provided with its head cock to the side, absolutely says I need to speak with someone. I need to speak to your manager. Like right now, which did not come fast enough. And I am a living I had some of your leaves on this tree, and I gotta tell you, the service on this tree has been really, really bad. And she would get that

every fund too, because look at her. I'm just giving your money back. Please don't be mad at me anymore. I want my money back. These are These are Karen birds. You know these? Uh So they're about the size of a chicken. They you did a very good job of describing it. But yeah. It has these like brownish black feathers on their back and tail feathers which they kind of have like an oil slick sheen when in the light. Uh. They're tipped in a yellowish gold. Uh. The front part

of their wings have these dark burgundy feathers. Their bellies are gold. The flesh around their cheeks and eyes is bright blue. Uh. They have a mohawk crest of yellow and black feathers. The care and haircut a little bit and then a sort of like black hawk like beak, and their eyes are crimson red. So a little a little you know, interesting looking, a little scary. Maybe. I think I call it the nightmares. I think they're kind of pretty though they look like a cyberpunk turkey to

me a little bit, it does. I was not this making cyberpunk turkey, but you look at this thing in the face, it does look like tattoos. Like sidekick bird. Okay, if the Terminator came back and needed an animal sidekick, it would be this guy and he would pick out your eyes. I need your clothes, and I need a couple of bone for my bird. I love it. So they are found in the Amazon rainforest. Now here's the thing. These are really interesting birds in that they kind of

show us like this transition from dinosaurs to birds. Now, this doesn't mean that these are the transitional birds. We don't know that. They're probably have like pretty old species, but there could have been many species before them that were more transitional. But here here's where it gets weird. Is that their chicks. Remember how we were talking about

the claws on the archaeopterics. It's chicks have claws on their wings, like little tiny claws, kind of like it could either be a vestige of dinosaur claws or a new adaptation that like came back like they didn't have claws and then they re evolved claws. We don't really know necessarily, but these claws allow them to climb trees before they're capable of flight, and the claws go away by adulthood, so it's basically to protect these little you're

shaking your head, but listen. At first, I was like, Okay, maybe it's the baby birds that I love, Like, maybe just their adult selves are scary and I need to focus my energy on loving baby birds. And doesn't love a baby But now here they have claws and they can try and trees with those claws before they can learn to fly. With just the Watson babies, that might be in a to turn me off all the bird babies. I know it's perpetudice, but I don't know how to

trust in now hashtag not all bird babies. But yeah, so these are for defense. So if the chicks are attacked by predators, they can drop out of the tree into water, swim to shore, and then climb back up their trees. So they're not using these clauses weapons. They're using them for defense. It is super cool. It's weirdly very cool. I maybe went over again. Damn it, you're really getting me here today, Katie. It's tough because I like I like the idea of doing the pocahonas dive

into waters with a giant waterfall behind them. Uh, it gives off a magic and majestical feel. That's they're from the sun. That's like little bit dumpy baby bird going like it's probably listen, they're having fun. That's their version of summer camp. We get it too. Now, these guys are from the land where they have like the really giant birds. Right, they're extinct now, but it was like a mesa that like rose above and like there was

some more. Are you to understand all I'm talking about? Well, there there were um like the terror birds, like the land dwelling ones or the big what's it called. Um there's the one, there's the ones that could fly, and then there's the giant terror birds that lived on the ground. Yeah, no, the ones that could fly. The terror birds were the one on the ground. Our gentivis magnificence. Magnificence. Lord, Now

that is a big guy. This is the stuff that haunts my nightmares that I can't oh my oh lord. I'm like they okay, guys, imagine like you know how um vultures are sort of like especially when we think of them from our like animated cartoons things. They're like thin and like creepy and they've got like little hunchbacks and they you know, they don't have this voice, but

that's the voice that I imagine in my head. These guys are like very thick, like huge, much larger but with that scene creepy lunch back thing, and I can't They're like a like a much more swoll California condor. It's enough for me. I don't like them, but I think they're they're cool, Like their history is cool because they like magically because of how the tectonic plates shifted, they were like higher above than what got knocked down. They were like, we're pretty good up here, and they

lasted to like we're going up here. Yeah, And they had like they were a huge they like had a wingspan of like twenty feet or something. It much larger than a man. It's it's upsetting, Yeah, it was. Yeah, they were serious birds. These ones, in comparison, are just the size of chickens, so they're not not quite as intimidating in terms like they have to make up for

it in terms of their styling, not their size. But these are actually the last surviving member of the genus up as Thokamus, which and it's not exactly clear where they fit on the bird clade tree, but they may have been their own branch of early birds from around the time that dinosaurs went extinct and birds were starting to evolve. So like you know, you have birds evolving and then this is like a could be like a really early early bird. Okay, all right, so he definitely

got the worm. He he was all set. They're actually herbivores. They eat vegetation exclusively and they actually so this is crazy, but they have a crop. So that's like part of the bird digestive system that works similar to the guts of ruminants. So ruminants are cows, goats, sheep, deer, et cetera. That where they will ferment vegetation in a special part of their digestive system called the ruman But these birds,

they aren't mammals. They don't have a room, and but they have a rop where they keep this vegetation and it is also fermented for easier digestion. So they are also called uh, they're called flying cows. Sometimes they're also called skunk bird or stink bird because the fermenting leaves actually create a foul odor. But yeah, they're basically flying cows. I love that they're not flying cows, but I imagine they're slightly tipsy cows. All this fermentation going on within them.

Maybe they're Okay, we have to climb this waterfall and get back to our diving spot. Damn it, Oh my gosh, these birds are very fancy and very disruptive. Yes, yes, they're they're the drunk Karens, the drunk flying vegetarian Karens of the world. That's great. Different bird species have all sorts of different eating habits. There's the flying cow or before we just talked about. There are insectivores, carnivores, frugivores who eat fruit, granivores carnivores did I mention carnivores already?

And omnivores. There are birds who are scavengers, birds who eat other birds, birds who eat bones. I'm looking at you, bearded vultures. If there's something edible on this earth, there's probably a bird who can eat it. They'll even eat small rocks and grit to help them with their digestion. So let's all be thankful. We can't fit inside a bird's beak. When we return, we'll talk about a couple of birds that make us question how they could possibly

be dinosaurs. They're way too cute. Paleontologists, paleobiologists, and paleo artists try their best to reconstruct what extinct dinosaurs looked like based on fossil evidence, but we don't know exactly what dinosaur ors look like. They were probably much different from the depictions they received in Jurassic Park. First of all, it's hard to know exactly how their flesh was filled out, or they wire in scaly brown and green, or were

they brightly colored with vibrant, fluffy feathers. As we make more discoveries and become more sophisticated with our ability to examine ancient DNA, will continue to get a closer picture of what different species of dinosaurs may have actually looked like. But there are a couple of living dinosaurs that we know exactly what they look like and near a durable So now we've talked about the evolutionary history of birds and dinosaurs, and we've talked about some birds that remind

us that they are in fact dinosaurs. Now I want to talk about birds that when you look at them, You're like, how is this ever a dinosaur? An sense I feel like I will be very soothed by these birds. I'm wanted. I I ratchet up your anxiety and then I bring it back down. I'm so thoughtful of you. But yeah, So the first one I want to look at is the Inca turn. It is a very proper looking bird with a debonair little mustache. He literally has the curly mustache that a villain has, but he has

the eyes of a puppy. He looked like a little p emperor penguin kind of who is your little gentleman? Who is your little gentleman? Yeah, he's got this little he or she. This could also be a female mustache. Let's let's make mustaches unisex. Honestly, but I can save a lot of money on waxing. Let's do it, you know, Like I sometimes I think like if I had a handlebar mustache, I don't know, I think I could pull it off. You could absolutely pull it off. Are you?

Thank you? Thank you? So these these little little gentlemen and gentlewomen who live on the coasts of Chile and Peru, they are these little puff and esque birds and like all turns. They are seabirds, so they're about a foot long and six ounces, so you could hold it like a sandwich. Their bodies are slate gray or blackish gray. Their feet are bright orange, their beaks are bright oranges red.

It looks like they have two little dabs of like yellow makeup on their cheeks and bush were yellow, it would be right on the apples of It's kind of like clown makeup. Two little bright dots of yellow on the each side of their mouths. These are these fleshy parts of their cheeks. I think they're called gape pouches, so they look like and then they have, of course this like these two feathery plumes that look like candlebar mustache coming out from either side of its beak that

are and they're white. It's just it looks like this, like weird gentleman clown. I'm surprised Disney has not made this a main character for one of their films yet. It's got cute, little loved feet, so I imagine it swims a little. Yes, yes, it does swim. Yeah. I want to see it as much to act like ripple them. My water probably does blows in the wind and there's seeing sea shanties. You know, I can see it now

the movie. Now I imagine, Okay, this bird it has to protect the coastline and make sure the fish appli stays good for you know, all the little mama and baby birdies back on land trying to survive. And on his adventure, he meets a giant whale and they talk about ancestors that brought them here and how he used to be a dinosaurus to be a dinosaur, what were you? A tiny horse thing? That was a tiny horse too,

that's what whales where. It's so funny, like these huge whales used to be these tiny, like little rabbit like horses. Yeah okay, yeah again that he travels back in time and that becomes friends with these tiny land horse rabbit whales. I just love the role reversal of like these huge dinosaurs becoming these little gentleman seabirds and then like these teeny tiny, little like weird horse animals becoming these huge whales. I have to look, I'm like trying to figure out

what to google and like horse whale ancestors. Yeah, so whale land, let me let me find I forgot its name I think it's called into highest highest h y. Yeah, here it is. It's like a kangaroo clever thing. What in the hell that is so former? When you turned into a whale that imagined like a musk rat mixed through the cheetah mixed with a kangaroo the size of a rabbit, and that's what it is. Is so weird.

But you can also kind of see where a whale with more like if if you guys know animals, I might be showing my age on that, but if you ever saw a human turn into an animal, that's animals. And I can see this thing turning into a whale, even though that's the craziest thing ever. I kept saying that it was horse like, but it's more deer like.

I don't know why it's a horse um, but yeah, here's I'm gonna paste an image and to the dock here where you can see it looks like it looks like a freaking golden retriever mixed with a deer a kangaroo. AM stunned. It's so strange, It is so so strange, but it's it was this little hooved animal that was the size of I don't know a cappy bara. You know what a cappy barros? Yes, they do. They're super cute. Wow, guys, you have to look it up. Don't rely on our

descriptions because you have to see it for yourself. It is the most in Like, I see where their ears went. I see how it's like lost its legs. It became like elongated fin form. It's all there, but it's infer and like a dog but not. Oh god, it's so cool. It's so weird. Yeaholution, it's yes, evolution, you crazy. But back to these incaterns, little little mustachio seabirds. So they are I don't know. To me, they kind of look like a cross between a pigeon and a penguin with

duck legs and a mustache. That is so. They're similar to puffins in terms of their habits. They eat fish. They do dive into the water or dip to catch little fish. Unlike puffins, they don't do deep dives. They just kind of stick to the surface of the water. They also have these little denticles on the inside of their beaks that helps them secure these fish in place. Uh. They're also similar to puffins. They have these huge nesting

colonies where they have thousands of families. They're very socially outgoing, and they are monogamous for at least a whole breeding season, so they can switch partners for different breedings Swiss seasons, sometimes they stick to the same partner, but yeah, they they raise their eggs together. And then that little mustache that both the females and males have is actually an indicator of the inca terns health, and both males and females use it to assess their partners health and suitability,

so it is really cute to me. Basically they're dating is like how healthy is your mustato lists? And we could all use it in our dating cycles and should be like, how healthy are you? Really? Also like the idea of a polyamorous sitcom starting these guys, they're just like, listen, that was last raining season, this beeking season, Benna, try something jefferent, but it's all love boo. And then you know, we spent two hours grooming each other's mustaches, and that's

how we know it's love. Hand in hand in handlebar is what it'd be called perfect. And it's also said that they have a mew like call. Now here's the thing I would love it if they sounded like a cat mewing. But I've listened to this. It sounds like a cat who's like a chain smoker. To me, it doesn't. It's not a cute little male. If you want to listen to it that YouTube link. Oh my god, yes,

there clicking in now. Oh, it does sound like a New York cat who has waited for the bus for too long and as someone's trying to cut in for a night. Yeah, I will say it to not as horrifying as I thought it was going to be. It's kind of cute. No, it's chain smoker cat, which is cute. But I mean, if your cat don't chain smoke. I'm not saying smoke, don't do it. Cats be cool, be

mule staying, SMaL steal. Uh. So, now I want to talk about a bird who when you think about the evolutionary path of dinosaurs and birds, it is mind blowing. It is the tiniest bird in the world and it is the b hummingbird. So the b hummingbird is only found in Cuba. It is only two inches long, it's under three grams, it weighs less than a single grape, and it's about the size of a grape. H it is tiny. It is so my god, guys, if you've seen flit from Pocacon, it's it's a tiny hummingbird. It's

like that. Like it. Oh, it could fit between your fingers. Yes, it's it's literally like a little flying, colorful grape and always less than a grape. It's I don't know, it's nuts. I'm looking at one perched on somebody's thumbnail. Oh my god, it's okay. This is the only bird I stand. This bird and I are friends. It is the cutest and it doesn't even have like it's beacut kind of long like typically is of a hummingbird, but doesn't have that weird like long tongue thing that I don't like. That

thing leads me out. It feels very it does, but you can't see it. It's so it's proportionate to its body and it's cut. And also it's plumage is very beautiful, like it's almost iridescent. Yeah. So males are a bright iridescent blue on their back and females are a bright iridescent green, and their bellies are kind of a grayish white, and they eat like most hind birds. They eat nectar. Sometimes they'll eat a spider or tiny insect, whatever they can fit in their little beaks. Their beaks do open.

I know, it seems like they're just like a drinking straw that doesn't open and close, but yeah they can. They can open and close it and use it like little pincers. But yeah. Mostly it's mostly nectar that they feed on, and they build teeny teeny teeny tiny nests. It's the size of a corner o. Their nests can fit on a clothes pin and they lay two itty bitty eggs in it, and each egg is the size of a single pe. You guys can't describe to you pass out it is and it's always two little eggs.

Oh my god. You can see there's a lot of pictures of people like handling or putting, you know, things near it, so you can get a relative idea of the size. But very very tiny, so cute. I'm obsessed with dollhouses. I love tiny things, and this is kind of perfect. I know, I love I love miniatures. This. I got to the point of quarantine where it's like I'm going to build some miniatures, but I didn't do it. But I work and also if you up it's you got a primate and start from the top. It's so much.

But when I obsessively watch I think videos on Instagram with people like here's tiny dollhouse, me too, tiny cafe. Have you ever seen tiny cooking? Like it's a YouTube thing where they build a tech they build a tiny, fully functional kitchen and cook tiny food. I like it when they get a hamster and they feed the hamster. Yes. Oh I saw one where they made a hamster spa and they put the hamster in the tiny spat little jets, but a little thing that was so cute. I can't

take it. Like, imagine like a bee hummingbird in a tiny kitchen, one of these, like I just I'm dead. I diad this is what killed me. A little cherry cloth bathrobe. You can stay cuddly. Oh my mom sent me photos of there was this little hummingbird nest, not a bee hummingbird, just a normal hummingbird. And it was so cute. The tiny eggs they just look like, I don't know, they look like little little gumballs. I want, for some reason just want to like put it all

in my mouth. I don't know why it would not taste good, but I don't know. I don't and I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Maybe I'm like part snake just now. Of course I don't want to do this because I want them to develop into tiny hummingbirds. But can you imagine the world's tiniest Friday egg from a bee hummingbird egg on a tiny pan. I love it with little tiny sandgates. Those are the cutest. I like how whenever there's a cute animal, it's like, Oh, it's so cute, how can

I eat it? Yes, I don't advocate eating the b hummingbird, but they are so cute. They are so cute. But it's also it's just crazy to think about how the evolutionary path of the therapods that also created the t rex ended up with like the little tiny p bird. Like, it's just so like to put it in perspective, the earliest common ancestors of therapods, so all therapods, including like velociraptors t rex is birds, was probably something either similar to or was he Arasaurus, which is one of the

earliest dinosaurs. It's a bipedal carnivore that looked like a sort of meaty your philosophy like a cross between a t rex and a velociraptor. It weighed seven hundred and seventy pounds and grew to be up to twenty ft in length. And these guys evolved around two hundred and thirty million years ago. And it, I mean, it's like, you know, I can see how it like shrank down into bird ancestors and like beefed up into like t rex.

But it's just it's crazy that it started with this template and then just behind door number one, you become a t rex behind door number two. Verbs I like, I really would like one of these dinosaurs and the size of a bee hummingbird. Like I really enjoyed the idea of this little Again, dude, I don't know if you call that a snout on a dinosaur the mouth yeah sure, yeah if you little guys so cute, it's trying to bite your finger but it can't get it.

But like, so these guys were from around two hundred thirty million years ago. Be hummingbirds evolved around ten million years ago, so it only took two hundred and twenty million years for Herosaurus or maybe a dinosaur similar to it that is thought to be the ancestor of therapods, to become a little less than a grape size buzzing puffball. It's crazy, you guys. That's so impressive. Dinosaurs are amazing. Evolution is amazing. I feel like I am less afraid

of birds, but more conscious of the adult ones. I am now warming up to baby birds. I think baby birds are okay. Most people dislike they like adult birds, but they don't like the babies because they think that they about Simon cats are like the shaved cats. And I'm just like, listen, guys, every no matter what how much hair you have or how little hair you have, you're worthy of love and you still be adorable and super cute. Hypocritical coming from us naked humans. We're hella naked,

Like we have to put on some clothes. Can you imagine a baby bird in a clothes? Oh my god, I have imagine. Okay, Well, would I want to put on it like a little Jackie Kennedy outfit with the okay? Well, so I feel like we've been on a learning journey and maybe, like I know, it's it's we're not going

to solve the relationship you have with birds. In one podcast, but like I feel like instead of like saying, don't try to think about like, oh I shouldn't be afraid of birds, think about like maybe there's like a reason for this fear, and let's find the science behind it, and then that way we can move forward and put baby birds and sailor costumes. That makes sense. Yes, yes, send me all of your baby birds in sailor costumes. Please.

I love him or her or them already. Um, we haven't solved the problem, but we have come much closer. After that, I thank you. That's all I need to hear. So, thank you so much for joining me today Joel. Of course, Joel is our wonderful producer. But do you have anything else to plug Sure, if you are a mature listener, you can check out Fake Doctor's Real Friends, which is a Scrubs rewatch show. It's a fun show to be on and can we watch along with us on Hulu

dot com. Other than that, you can come find me on my twitters, wrote out a lot of social stuff and a lot of sci fi stuff. I am Joel Monik and that's j O E L L E M O N I tu eat all one week and you can find us on Instagram at Creature Feature Pod. I'll be posting pictures of all these fantastic birds. Find us on Twitter at Creature Feet pod. That's f e A T not f e ET. That songing very different. You can find me if you just want to hear my

Katie thoughts. Again, not not necessarily related to the show, but you know, just my thoughts and opinions. That's at Katie Golden And as always I am also pro bird rights where I This is a very relevant episode about basically the bird takeover is emminent and we must prepare for our new beloved bird overlords. Thanks to the Space Coassics for their super awesome song x Alumina. Creature Feature

is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app website, Apple podcast, or Hey Gus, what wherever you get your favorite shoes? To see you next Wednesday.