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Speaker 3: Oh hey, it's cauliflower rice which smells like farts and
Speaker 3: knows that you have your doubts, but it's excited to
Speaker 3: prove you wrong. Ally ward back with another episode of Oologies.
Speaker 3: This one's just light as a feather, nothing but wall
Speaker 3: the wall, behavior in biology, in trivia, and weirdness in history.
Speaker 3: Let's get into it, but first I want to thank
Speaker 3: you to everyone who buys ologies merch at ologiesmerch dot com.
Speaker 3: Thank you to everyone supporting on patreon dot com, slash ologies,
Speaker 3: and for everyone who tells friends or rates the show
Speaker 3: on iTunes or subscribes that keeps it up in the
Speaker 3: charts or reviews, which you know, I creep gently so
Speaker 3: I can pull a fresh catch each week, like this
Speaker 3: one from the Dusty Wrangler, who says, hearing how normal
Speaker 3: all these scientists are is making returning back to school
Speaker 3: a lot less intimidating, and that's just what I needed.
Speaker 3: One thing, though, Now every time I wash my hands,
Speaker 3: I do hear you whispering in my ear to milk
Speaker 3: my thumbs, and I only resent that a little bit.
Speaker 3: Thanks for the reminder. Thank you to the Dusty Wrangler
Speaker 3: for that, and all the reviewers, especially also to Mike
Speaker 3: the nighttime Nurse for listening and much more so for
Speaker 3: saving lives.
Speaker 1: We love y'all. Okay, plumology. Did you know?
Speaker 3: This was the thing?
Speaker 1: I did not?
Speaker 3: So. It comes from the Latin for down or for
Speaker 3: first beard, and later plume came to mean like a
Speaker 3: stream of smoke, so we're talking, oh manner of feathers,
Speaker 3: Oh feathers now. I have already covered ornithology. It came
Speaker 3: out in November twenty nineteen early adopter. Now in case
Speaker 3: anys have not found it go way on back you'll
Speaker 3: find ornithology. But I was thrilled when this ologist at
Speaker 3: the Natural History Museum of la suggested via email that
Speaker 3: there were many, many more subologies with feathered friends, including
Speaker 3: them dang feathers themselves. So I made haste to the
Speaker 3: museum one sleepy Wednesday afternoon, right before they closed for
Speaker 3: the day, and I met up with this ologist who
Speaker 3: was wearing a flowery blouse and a museum id on
Speaker 3: a dangling lanyard. And she got her bachelor's studying birds
Speaker 3: at UC Berkeley, and got her Masters from San Diego
Speaker 3: State and her PhD at Harvard, working on the genomics
Speaker 3: of bird feather colors and organismic and evolutionary biology. Now
Speaker 3: as a newish curator of Ornithology at the NHMLA. She
Speaker 3: met me at the entrance and then led me through
Speaker 3: the staff only behind the scenes, through the shuttered hall
Speaker 3: of dioramas now off limits to the public, past cases
Speaker 3: and cases of taxidermied specimens dating back a few hundred years,
Speaker 3: Through more doors to the archive of hundreds of thousands
Speaker 3: of birds in the museum's collections.
Speaker 1: Let me go get a step still one.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they go all the way up.
Speaker 1: I've got one and twenty two.
Speaker 3: Thousand, one hundred and twenty two thousand.
Speaker 1: You know you've been here a year.
Speaker 3: How do you get used to where everything is?
Speaker 1: Have you opened up each one of these? Opened up?
Speaker 1: All of them. They're like, de's only certain ones that
Speaker 1: I opened up over and over again. Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: they're like, this is where the cool stuff is.
Speaker 3: And then we went to her bright and airy office
Speaker 3: and we took a seat before a few stuffed specimens
Speaker 3: in a tray waiting for us, and I asked her
Speaker 3: all the quilled questions that would rattle out of my
Speaker 3: dome as well as yours. So shake off the dust
Speaker 3: and get ready to soar the sky and learn about
Speaker 3: what makes a feather a feather, how they evolved, why
Speaker 3: they're important, that sounds, they can make the longest bird tail,
Speaker 3: some feather heists, sexual selection, gossip, peacock plumes, bird spotting, eridescins,
Speaker 3: the blackest black, tiny feathers, huge ones, dinosaur myths and mysteries,
Speaker 3: and more with feather researcher and professional plumologist, doctor Alison Schultz.
Speaker 3: Now you are a plumologist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'm a plumologist. I study bird feathers and
Speaker 1: how they evolve, and kind of more specifically, I think
Speaker 1: about the colors of feathers, the structure, and the development.
Speaker 1: All of that is integral into the whole picture.
Speaker 3: This. I did not know this was an actual study,
Speaker 3: And when you emailed me, I was like fingers igniting
Speaker 3: the keyboard, like, oh yeah, I was so excited. So
Speaker 3: you're an ornithologist, and then plumology is kind of a
Speaker 3: subset of it, exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's not actually the only thing I do, but
Speaker 1: it's probably one of my favorite things that I do
Speaker 1: because birds are bird. Feathers are amazing, They're beautiful, they're gorgeous.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is a very stupid question, just right
Speaker 3: off the top.
Speaker 1: Do any other living animals on the planet have feathers
Speaker 1: that our birds? No living animals? Okay, okay, Yeah, So
Speaker 1: actually we used to think that that was one of
Speaker 1: the defining characteristics of birds, was feathers, But once they
Speaker 1: started finding feathers in all of these non avian dinosaurs,
Speaker 1: that became not true anymore. So now we know that
Speaker 1: feathers evolved long before birds did.
Speaker 3: And all birds are dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: All birds are dinosaurs. Yes, that is true.
Speaker 3: That still like rocks me like living dinosaurs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it's one of my I participate in
Speaker 1: dino Fest. Now, you know, we have a table representing
Speaker 1: living dinosaurs. And it's funny to me how many of
Speaker 1: the like kids actually know that birds are dinosaurs and
Speaker 1: adult stone. So it's like the perspective is shifting, but
Speaker 1: we're not quite there yet. Now, what about her as
Speaker 1: a kiddo?
Speaker 3: Was she an anty bitty bird nerd? Did you always
Speaker 3: like birds?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm not one of those kids that grew
Speaker 1: up loving birds. I always loved animals, and I always
Speaker 1: loved biology, but I was like, actually a big cat lover.
Speaker 1: I used to go to the zoo, I loved zoo books,
Speaker 1: I loved documentaries. It wasn't really until college. I took
Speaker 1: this class Natural History of the Vertebrates, where we went
Speaker 1: on field trips every week and learned about birds. And
Speaker 1: then I took ornithology the next year and started doing
Speaker 1: field work and working in museums. And that's kind of
Speaker 1: that class was really what did it for me and
Speaker 1: what led to this whole career.
Speaker 3: And was there a moment in the class, like was
Speaker 3: there a particular chapter or like some kind of photo
Speaker 3: where you're like, hot.
Speaker 1: Diggity, this is really cool. Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't think it was like a chapter or photo.
Speaker 1: It was actually, I think more of a field trip
Speaker 1: when I could actually start to identify the birds myself
Speaker 1: with my field guides. So I think I remember the
Speaker 1: first one that I identified was a tricky one as
Speaker 1: a hermit thrush, and I was very proud of myself.
Speaker 3: What is it with birding? Why do you think bird
Speaker 3: people are so bird people? That's a great question.
Speaker 1: I think it's because, well, a birds are a thing
Speaker 1: that you can actually do all the time. Birds are
Speaker 1: all around us, and there are different ones everywhere. So
Speaker 1: it's like, once you get into it, you start realizing,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I can, you know, go to the
Speaker 1: beach and look at some birds, and I can go
Speaker 1: to mountains and look at different birds. There are also,
Speaker 1: you know, rare birds that show up at the same
Speaker 1: at some times. So I think there are a lot
Speaker 1: of people that like have a collector in them and
Speaker 1: that makes them really love kind of birding. And also birds,
Speaker 1: I think they're just fascinating creatures. They're so beautiful and
Speaker 1: they're so different than us in many ways. I think
Speaker 1: that draws a lot of people to them as well.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Pokemon go with it just as
Speaker 1: just like Pokmon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I wonder if there's something about people who like
Speaker 3: scavenger hunts and kind of augmented reality that love birding.
Speaker 1: Like I don't know.
Speaker 3: My friend Sarah m used to really be into geocashing
Speaker 3: and she's become an avid birder and she's always been
Speaker 3: that kind of adventurer, And I wonder if there's something
Speaker 3: about like going out to collect things but not actually
Speaker 3: killing them and taking them home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't know, it could be. And you know,
Speaker 1: one thing about birds is you can go out and
Speaker 1: you are almost guaranteed to see birds no matter where
Speaker 1: you go, even in the middle of the city. You know,
Speaker 1: there's tons of species that we see here, and unlike mammals,
Speaker 1: for example, I mean, you might see some mammals like
Speaker 1: squirrels and things, but you're not going to see like
Speaker 1: sixty different species in one day, and most of them
Speaker 1: aren't active kind of you know, when we would be active,
Speaker 1: so you would mostly be seeing sign like scat or
Speaker 1: burrows and things like that not quite as satisfying.
Speaker 3: In my mind, looking at a turd isn't as satisfying
Speaker 3: as seeing a.
Speaker 1: Beautiful turd versus bird. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean if there were tiny flying raccoons everywhere
Speaker 3: in different colors, can you imagine like a tiny flying
Speaker 3: passa that was.
Speaker 1: Like purple, that would be pretty amaze.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But as we have birds that are that, it's
Speaker 3: just why birds rule. So okay, feathers now is a
Speaker 3: feather like a modified hair?
Speaker 1: What's happening? That's a great question. There's somewhat related to
Speaker 1: hair since that they're made out of keratin and they're
Speaker 1: you know, an external structure that grows out of the skin,
Speaker 1: but they're actually much more related to scales. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So both feathers and hair are made out of keratin,
Speaker 1: but different kinds of keratin. There's this kind of keratin
Speaker 1: called alpha keratin that mostly makes up hairs and our
Speaker 1: fingernails and like mammalian structures, whereas beta keratin is what
Speaker 1: makes up bird feathers and actually more reptile scales and
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 3: Okay, quick aside, Beta keratins are the proteins that make
Speaker 3: reptile and bird scales badass and tough and waterproof. But
Speaker 3: they are not to be confused with beta carot which
Speaker 3: is a pigment that makes fruits and veggies orange and
Speaker 3: which gets converted into retinol, and it keeps our skin
Speaker 3: and our eyes healthy. So that is beta carotene. We
Speaker 3: eat it with ranch dressing. Now, beta keratin again is
Speaker 3: in birdy scales and beaks and claws and feathers, which
Speaker 3: evolved from scales. Imagine something like an alligator scale splintered
Speaker 3: into thousands of fluffy shreds selected through millions of years
Speaker 3: of getting it on boom. You have feathers, Well, you don't,
Speaker 3: but birds do. So it's kind of like a scale
Speaker 3: just got elongated a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, they started at scales. If you think
Speaker 1: about it, birds actually still have scales on their feet.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and that's something that we forget. And
Speaker 1: feathers are such complex structures that we do think that
Speaker 1: they first started off as kind of very simple, like
Speaker 1: think of like a just a simple almost hair like structure,
Speaker 1: and then evolve these more and more elaborate structures.
Speaker 3: And so do you think that they were more like quills,
Speaker 3: like a porcupine.
Speaker 1: Quill no, they would have been soft. They would probably
Speaker 1: look a lot like fur.
Speaker 3: So a bunch of dinos had fur esque proto feathers,
Speaker 3: and they were stomping around like big fuzzy muppets. And
Speaker 3: even before Archaeopteryx, which was a raven sized feathered avian
Speaker 3: dinosaur long considered history's first bird flight, feathers were all
Speaker 3: over the place in dinosaurs. Also, while researching this aside,
Speaker 3: I accidentally found out, you want to hear something weird,
Speaker 3: the t rexers had wishbones. Nothing to do with feathers.
Speaker 3: I just think it's weird. Tea bones had big old
Speaker 3: honk and wishbones like a turkey.
Speaker 1: Oh life, y'all.
Speaker 3: Anyway, But the feathers came first, and then the flight.
Speaker 1: You know, feathers, you think of them as being really
Speaker 1: important for flight, which of course they are, but feathers
Speaker 1: of all long before flight did so they actually didn't
Speaker 1: evolve for flight. They were co opted to be used
Speaker 1: in flight. You can look at the microscopic structure of
Speaker 1: feathers and actually see the shapes of the pigment molecules
Speaker 1: in them that correspond to different types of pigments and
Speaker 1: how they're placed and so we actually can reconstruct what
Speaker 1: the probable color was of some of these dinosaurs. So
Speaker 1: for example, Microraptor, which is this really cool relative of
Speaker 1: early birds that had we think they had actually four wings,
Speaker 1: so both their front legs and their hind legs all
Speaker 1: had the flight feathers on them, so they probably use
Speaker 1: them all for flight. We think they're iridescent, kind of
Speaker 1: like a blackbird or starling or something like that.
Speaker 3: And that's based on the color of the kind of
Speaker 3: pigment capsules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's based on how the pigment capsules are arranged.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Yeah, the mechanisms of color and how
Speaker 1: they're produced. That's like one of my favorite topics of study.
Speaker 3: What did you think of the feather trapped in amber
Speaker 3: that was found like ten years ago. Someone bought a
Speaker 3: chunk of ambert like a market and they're like, holy smokes,
Speaker 3: this is a dinosaur feather.
Speaker 1: Dinosaur feather, you know, pretty much looks like a real
Speaker 1: regular feather. There's some very cool feathers that they found
Speaker 1: to be trapped in amber, and you know, found feathers
Speaker 1: that don't even look like modern feathers.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I looked at pictures and there's a ninety
Speaker 3: nine million year old tiny baby dinosaur tail and it
Speaker 3: looks kind of like if you encased a shaft of
Speaker 3: wheat in a block of fossilized ginger ale. So obviously
Speaker 3: they have evolved and changed over the millions of years.
Speaker 3: But all of this just makes the holy shit a
Speaker 3: seagull is a dinosaur so much clearer knowing that these
Speaker 3: paleo lizard scales got shreddy and long, thereby helping them
Speaker 3: take flight.
Speaker 1: But what what are feathers? Exactly?
Speaker 3: So walk me through the anatomy of a feather. There's
Speaker 3: like the main shaft almost like a leaf has a vein,
Speaker 3: and then the ones off the side.
Speaker 1: What's going on? Yeah, that's a good, good question. So okay,
Speaker 1: so our typical kind of feather structure when you think
Speaker 1: of what a feather looks like. So yeah, so the
Speaker 1: main shaft, we all that the racus and so that's
Speaker 1: you know, there's going to be this part that actually
Speaker 1: has all of these little branching structures and a part
Speaker 1: that's bare that's at the bottom, and that's what's going
Speaker 1: to be attached to the skin. You know, if you
Speaker 1: think of like a writing quill, that's where you would
Speaker 1: dip the ink in and use as you know, used
Speaker 1: to write with. And so those little branching structures off
Speaker 1: of the main shaft we call those feather barbs. Oh
Speaker 1: and each of those feather barbs actually has little branching
Speaker 1: shafts off of them. These are hard to see with
Speaker 1: the you know, your eye, but you actually can if
Speaker 1: you look really really closely, called barbules, and in many feathers,
Speaker 1: especially feathers that need to be strong, like flight feathers,
Speaker 1: the barbules also have these little tiny hooks that we
Speaker 1: call barbou cells that actually link them together. So think
Speaker 1: about if you find like a feather on the ground
Speaker 1: and you kind of break it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like you can split the different barbs zip it back together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so that's actually because you're actually making those little
Speaker 1: hooklets reattached to each other. So that's how feathers maintain
Speaker 1: their shape.
Speaker 3: And they're like little belgrowy kind of a hook exactly
Speaker 3: just like that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: I always wondered obviously about that, because yeah, you can
Speaker 3: make a feather look like a hot mess so fast,
Speaker 3: and then you're like, JK, I'm all put together and
Speaker 3: you're like, whre do you go feather let's do a makeover?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: How do you feel when you see feathers on costumes?
Speaker 3: And if you see like a vase full of peacock
Speaker 3: feathers like in a corner, do you have to go
Speaker 3: up and touch them? Or are you like, oh, what
Speaker 3: a tragedy that we're using those for decoration? How does
Speaker 3: a plumologist react to that?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't feel sad necessarily. I like them. I
Speaker 1: think they're beautiful. You know, birds they lose their feathers
Speaker 1: every year, often some you know, mini bird feathers. They
Speaker 1: will at least once a year, if not sooner. So
Speaker 1: it's not like birds are being harmed to get these feathers. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't really see anything wrong with using
Speaker 1: them in fashion or decor, especially like peacock feathers. I mean,
Speaker 1: those are some of the most elaborate feathers that you
Speaker 1: could think of. They're just so cool. So that's usually
Speaker 1: my reactions. Wow, those are super cool.
Speaker 3: So yes, peacock feathers just fall off of their butts
Speaker 3: once a year, and peacock farms just go around and
Speaker 3: pick them up off the ground, which is awesome, So
Speaker 3: we're done here.
Speaker 1: No we're not.
Speaker 3: My brain said, let's keep googling, so we did, and
Speaker 3: therein I found that peacocks are native to India and
Speaker 3: they're the national bird, so it's illegal to export peacock
Speaker 3: plumage from there. So most peacock farms are in China,
Speaker 3: and a lot of the birds are slaughtered and plucked,
Speaker 3: and their feathers are sold pretty cheap. So before you
Speaker 3: go purchasing a bundle off of wish dot com for
Speaker 3: like a buck apiece, or say a twenty five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars burbery trench coat made of peacock feathers, maybe do
Speaker 3: some research on the ethics and the origins. I'm talking
Speaker 3: to you, Anna Winter. Please don't be mean to me
Speaker 3: any pop cultural references to feathers, any feathers and movies
Speaker 3: that really annoy you. When you watch like cgi of birds,
Speaker 3: like in animated shows, are you ever like that's not
Speaker 3: what feathers look like?
Speaker 1: You know? I've actually been more impressed, especially lately, with
Speaker 1: how well feathers are represented, So I think animators are
Speaker 1: actually doing a pretty good job of like accurately representing feathers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like the people at Picks are probably
Speaker 3: hunkered down over encyclopedias.
Speaker 1: Of exactually, and you know they actually they'll come here
Speaker 1: to the museum and look at specimens so that they
Speaker 1: can accurately show how things really are, which is really cool.
Speaker 3: In terms of functions of feathers, can you walk me
Speaker 3: through some different varieties, like a menu of feathers?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there are different feathers have many different functions,
Speaker 1: and one thing that makes them really interesting to study
Speaker 1: is that oftentimes they're doing these functions simultaneously. Let's think
Speaker 1: about this really complex structure and try and understand what
Speaker 1: it's doing and how it evolved. My specialty is in
Speaker 1: feather color evolution, and feather color itself has many different functions. So,
Speaker 1: for example, thermer regulation birds keeping warm. That's kind of
Speaker 1: you know, one obvious use of feathers. In fact, we've
Speaker 1: co opted it for ourselves. Yeah, I think about down jacket.
Speaker 1: Birds have that built in all the time that.
Speaker 3: Just does that trap air so that it retains heat.
Speaker 1: Exactly, So it's like having this really warm air blanket
Speaker 1: right next to your skin. Basically, birds can actually control
Speaker 1: how warm they want to be by either fluffing themselves
Speaker 1: up or having the feathers be more flat. So if
Speaker 1: you think about like a really cold morning, I was
Speaker 1: in Boston for a really long time, and so you
Speaker 1: know sometimes when it's snowing, you see bird outside and
Speaker 1: it looks like a little puffball. And that's because they're
Speaker 1: increasing how much warm air that they have next to
Speaker 1: their skin, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I had no idea they could do that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so they're like, watch this, I'm going to get cuter
Speaker 3: and warmer.
Speaker 1: Exactly, I'm adorable. I'm going to become almost a complacent sphere.
Speaker 3: So they have a combination of down like an undercoat,
Speaker 3: and then do they have flight feathers on top of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So there are different types of feathers, So downy
Speaker 1: feathers are one type of feathers, and those feathers they
Speaker 1: don't have like the central rachus in the same way
Speaker 1: that what we call a contour feather, which is a
Speaker 1: body feather has or a flight feather would have. And
Speaker 1: they also don't have all the little hooklets that are
Speaker 1: going to be hooking their feather barbes and barbules together
Speaker 1: because they don't need to be hooked together. It's actually
Speaker 1: better for them to be more unorganized, because they can
Speaker 1: trap air molecules more efficiently that way.
Speaker 3: So down on a bird is chaotic.
Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 3: Ps some down jacket trivia because I think it's interesting.
Speaker 3: They were invented by a dude in nineteen thirty six
Speaker 3: named you ready for this Eddie Bower. That's right, the
Speaker 3: Eddie Bower. So Bauer almost died of hypothermia winter fishing
Speaker 3: and was like, hell, no, mister freeze, you have been
Speaker 3: thwarted in a jacket. So then he patented them in
Speaker 3: nineteen forty. But before we see all down is good,
Speaker 3: let's look at where that comes from. I thought maybe
Speaker 3: birds were like done with their down. I wanted to believe.
Speaker 3: And I hate to tell you this, but the best down, oh,
Speaker 3: this is so terrible, is taken from live birds. That
Speaker 3: does not feel good to the birds, which is why
Speaker 3: there are so many down alternatives on the market which
Speaker 3: are bird approved. So I'm sorry to be the bearer
Speaker 3: of heavy feather news, but that's the truth. So there
Speaker 3: are the contour or body feathers, the warm down feathers underneath,
Speaker 3: and then what other kind of feathers.
Speaker 1: There's another type of feathers that's really cool called richdal bristles.
Speaker 1: So if you ever looked really closely at a bird,
Speaker 1: like maybe there's a bird called a night jar, or
Speaker 1: a bird that is an insect eater, like a flycatcher,
Speaker 1: you might see like little it almost looks like little
Speaker 1: hairs coming right around the bill, almost like whiskers. Kind
Speaker 1: of okay, And so these are special feathers that only
Speaker 1: have this central racis. They don't actually have any barbs
Speaker 1: or bobuloles.
Speaker 3: Imagine a lip liner, but made out of false eyelashes
Speaker 3: boom ricti bristles.
Speaker 1: It's a mood. And for a long time people didn't
Speaker 1: know what, you know, what's what are these feathers doing.
Speaker 1: And they thought that okay, since a lot of these
Speaker 1: birds that have these are actually insectivores, they're probably funneling
Speaker 1: insects into their mouth, but actually experimentally showed that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case. But what they're probably doing is actually protecting
Speaker 1: the eyes of the bird.
Speaker 3: So really yeah, so they can't hit themselves on things.
Speaker 1: Well more so, like little debris doesn't get in the eyes,
Speaker 1: so when you're out chasing a bunch of bugs in
Speaker 1: the air, your eyes aren't getting you know, full of
Speaker 1: junk from the Oh.
Speaker 3: My god, Now what about a horned screamer? What about
Speaker 3: a horn scream What is that dangled agle on top?
Speaker 1: Well, that's actually that's like a part of the skull
Speaker 1: kind of so Okay, I'm not made of feathers, but
Speaker 1: actually a hard projection. Oh I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: Okay, I wasn't sure because I have seen pictures in
Speaker 3: there terrifying and hilarious. Oh. Enduring the tour she gave me,
Speaker 3: Allison showed me that some actually have those bristles in
Speaker 3: less mouth area places.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And some birds even have modified feathers on their eyes
Speaker 1: that look like eyelashes like hornbills. Have you seen that? No?
Speaker 3: Is that also to get to get to briout to
Speaker 3: protect them?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's very fancy.
Speaker 3: During the tour, we also looked at a tray of
Speaker 3: carry on eaters who were fashionably featherless in the head region.
Speaker 1: You don't want a lot of feathers getting in the
Speaker 1: way of all of your head functions, and birds like
Speaker 1: condors or vultures, you know they'll have pretty bare heads,
Speaker 1: and that's true of most carrion eaters because you don't
Speaker 1: want to be like have your head and a carcass
Speaker 1: and get all gunky and bloody and then have it
Speaker 1: all in your feathers, right.
Speaker 3: That's just right. Yeah, it's like someone with a beard
Speaker 3: eating a cheese worker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it's all in there. Yeah. I mean there
Speaker 1: are other birds that have you know, cress or other
Speaker 1: very special feathers. So, you know, we talked about thermoregulation
Speaker 1: is one use, but one of the other big uses
Speaker 1: of feathers, of course is signaling. And so whether that's
Speaker 1: being cryptic so you're trying to hide from predators, you know,
Speaker 1: think about like a kind of a brown bird that's
Speaker 1: maybe on the ground and hard to see, or to
Speaker 1: become more conspicuous, so they're actually trying to show off.
Speaker 1: And because plumage color is one of the things that
Speaker 1: bird can can actually demonstrate its quality, so it you know,
Speaker 1: they actually use their color to attract mates, for example,
Speaker 1: or to fight off rivals. So you know, males instead
Speaker 1: of fighting over a territory or something like that, males
Speaker 1: will actually be able to just like look at some
Speaker 1: of these colored patches and decide, oh, this guy's you know,
Speaker 1: not worth my time, or this guy's going to be
Speaker 1: a competitor, I better actually fight him.
Speaker 3: That's so judgie, that's amazing. They're looking each other up
Speaker 3: and down, like sizing each other up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, have you ever seen a red wing blackbird?
Speaker 1: You know, these blackbirds with red patches. So there was
Speaker 1: this experiment done, I believe it was in the eighties
Speaker 1: where they either made those red patches twice as big,
Speaker 1: or they colored them black so they're half as big,
Speaker 1: or there was no red patch at all. And they
Speaker 1: found when they made that red patch twice as big,
Speaker 1: actually those males were more They had way more other
Speaker 1: males attacking them. So males were like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: this guy is totally going to come and steal my territory.
Speaker 1: I better fight him off right away. Whereas if they
Speaker 1: made the patch half as big or not red at all,
Speaker 1: then these males wouldn't get attacked much at all, because like,
Speaker 1: oh this, you know, this guy is not a not
Speaker 1: a threat. I don't have to worry about him. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's so petty. I love it. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things I do study is actually how
Speaker 1: male and female plumage evolves differently in birds, and because
Speaker 1: you know, we can learn a lot about trying to
Speaker 1: pick apart these kind of natural versus sexual selection. That's
Speaker 1: what we call selection due to you know, getting more
Speaker 1: mating for example, and so you know, I think in
Speaker 1: birds that all they have to really show off is
Speaker 1: their plumage or their song. So you know, some birds
Speaker 1: might have a fancy song, some birds might have fancy plumage.
Speaker 1: So that's how they can show a mate that they
Speaker 1: are worthy of being their mate. Whether that's kind of
Speaker 1: a one off as happened sometimes, you know, some in
Speaker 1: some places, actually all of the males with very fancy
Speaker 1: plumages will get together in what's called alec and they'll
Speaker 1: all show off at the same time, and the female
Speaker 1: will come and basically be able to compare them all.
Speaker 1: Very nice selection.
Speaker 3: I'm going to start on this scene.
Speaker 1: And be like, God, which one do I like better?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: I think I'll go with this one. There's actually this
Speaker 1: really awesome species bird called cock of the rock. Oh
Speaker 1: that's literally their name. Are you serious? I'm serious. Are
Speaker 1: they British? Well, the person who described them were probably
Speaker 1: that's British. That sounds the most British thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, did I research who named this bird? Cock? Of
Speaker 3: the Rock, I sure did, and it appears to have
Speaker 3: been an explorer and biologist named Sir Joshua Wilson. But
Speaker 3: I looked up and down the internet, friends, and I
Speaker 3: swear this is the only detail I can find out
Speaker 3: about the man. So you know what, you never know
Speaker 3: what your big hit in life might be. Now, for
Speaker 3: Sir Joshua, it was Cock of the Rock, which, by
Speaker 3: the way, if no one is using that is their
Speaker 3: morning show DJ name at a classic rock station in
Speaker 3: New Jersey, please go for it.
Speaker 1: Cock the Rocks in rock a doodle Loo.
Speaker 3: Anyway, These Cock of the Rocks are a show stopping orange,
Speaker 3: Alison explains.
Speaker 1: But they're these bright orange birds, and the males will
Speaker 1: actually there. They live in the rainforests in South America,
Speaker 1: and males will fight over patches of light. So that's
Speaker 1: instead of having territories, they'll like defend their life patches.
Speaker 1: And that's because they're all together in the same place.
Speaker 1: And then when the female comes, they'll all get in
Speaker 1: their little light patches and kind of jump around and
Speaker 1: try and get her to choose them.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, like they each have spotlights on them exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so male birds are sometimes up in treetops just like
Speaker 3: having a Lady Gaga spotlight moment.
Speaker 1: How do they get into the treetops? Good question.
Speaker 3: Flight feathers, of course, So how are birds achieving all
Speaker 3: of our wildest dreams and soaring through the air so casually? Well, folks, feathers,
Speaker 3: that's why we're all here. How are these flight feathers working?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So okay, so a flight feather. One of the
Speaker 1: key aspects of a flight feather is that it's asymmetrical.
Speaker 1: And what does that mean? So if we look at
Speaker 1: a feather, you'll a flight feather, you'll see. Okay, so
Speaker 1: we've got our central racus, that central shaft. The barbs
Speaker 1: on one side will be shorter than the barbs on
Speaker 1: the other side. Oh, to think about like seeing a feather.
Speaker 1: So that's that's an indicator that the feather that you
Speaker 1: have is actually a flight feather. And that's and the
Speaker 1: way it works is that when air goes over these
Speaker 1: feathers and over the wing itself, the distance that it
Speaker 1: has to truvel. Wings are not flat, they're kind of concave.
Speaker 1: The distance it has to travel going over the wing
Speaker 1: is shorter than it has to travel going under the wing.
Speaker 1: And so because of that, air molecules are going to
Speaker 1: try and fill that pressure differential that it creates, and
Speaker 1: actually that's going to create lyft and so part of
Speaker 1: that is actually the structure of these asymmetric feathers. Really
Speaker 1: that's really cool.
Speaker 3: I never knew that they were asymmetrical like that. And
Speaker 3: now are those flight feathers? Where are flat feathers on
Speaker 3: the bird?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if we think about the wing of a bird,
Speaker 1: you know, I am extending my arm, but of course
Speaker 1: this I have to describe it with words. So the
Speaker 1: flight the really important flight feathers are the ones that
Speaker 1: are extending basically from the wing tip kind of towards
Speaker 1: as you get closer to the inside of the wing.
Speaker 1: And so if you're looking at a flying bird, they
Speaker 1: would be pointed at the tail. Oh wow. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: you know one thing, those feathers are probably the most
Speaker 1: constrained of all bird feathers. So you think about once
Speaker 1: you start looking at bird wings, you'll start noticing that
Speaker 1: even though many other parts of the bird will be
Speaker 1: many different colors, like those feathers are never any other color.
Speaker 1: And that's because one of the types of pigments that
Speaker 1: color birds feathers melanin. Melanin is familiar. It's also what
Speaker 1: colors our hair and our skin. It's very common throughout
Speaker 1: the animal kingdom. It also provides strength for feathers, and
Speaker 1: so you're almost always see flight feathers. They're going to
Speaker 1: look almost identical, I mean not completely, but much more
Speaker 1: than any other feather on the body. And that's because
Speaker 1: they're you know, evolved to be so specifically tailored to
Speaker 1: be able to provide flight.
Speaker 3: Wow. And they're usually the darker ones on.
Speaker 1: The exactly yep. So those that melanin gives them this
Speaker 1: kind of blackish brown color. And you know, one kind
Speaker 1: of way that we know this is so important for
Speaker 1: providing you know, structure and making feathers stronger is when
Speaker 1: you see an albino or a lucistic bird. So that's
Speaker 1: a bird that is missing its melanin. Albino would be
Speaker 1: no melanin at all in the body, and so you
Speaker 1: know the bird would be completely white and have pink eyes.
Speaker 1: Or lucistic means that part of the plumage is had
Speaker 1: the melonin. You know, whatever's producing the melanin broke, so
Speaker 1: you would see these kind of random white patches on
Speaker 1: the bird. And this bird called a frigate bird. So
Speaker 1: frigatebirds are really awesome flyers. They're type of sea birds.
Speaker 1: They're arguably the best flyers, most maneuverable. They're called the
Speaker 1: pirates of the sky because they steal fish from other birds.
Speaker 1: One washed up on shore that was an albino frigate bird,
Speaker 1: so it was completely white and its wing and tail
Speaker 1: feathers were destroyed. They were really yeah, completely like almost
Speaker 1: all of the barbs were broken off. So this bird
Speaker 1: probably couldn't even fly anymore. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: So it is really structural exactly, so interesting. And what
Speaker 3: about silent feathers, like, yeah, owl feathers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so owls. So on the part of their wing
Speaker 1: that would be kind of facing forward when their wing
Speaker 1: is out, so on the.
Speaker 3: Leading edge of the primary feathers, and the primary feathers
Speaker 3: are the ones closer to the wing tips.
Speaker 1: They actually have a small fringe of little structures so
Speaker 1: they almost look like kind of like very small eyelashes
Speaker 1: that are lining the front of the feathers that are
Speaker 1: on the fore facing part of the wing, and that
Speaker 1: actually is disrupting the airflow which allows them to fly
Speaker 1: silently have you ever noticed that when you go up
Speaker 1: to a pigeon and it starts like flapping really fast,
Speaker 1: it makes a bunch of noise. Yeah, And they actually
Speaker 1: try and make themselves louder. Let me hear you make
Speaker 1: some noise. So their flight feathers are are such that
Speaker 1: they're actually going to increase the amount of noise. And
Speaker 1: is that to scare off predation probably, yeah, to like
Speaker 1: just make themselves more ob behay I'm flying away from you. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And other birds. Do you know that other birds can
Speaker 1: make completely other types of sounds with their feathers?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Do you know hummingbirds can sing with their tails?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and they seriously, they seriously can. What does it
Speaker 1: sound like? It depends on the species, so it's very
Speaker 1: species specific. But for example, Anna's hummingbirds, they will fly
Speaker 1: up really really high in the air. These they do
Speaker 1: these courtship dives, and they'll dive down. They'll go super fast.
Speaker 1: At the bottom of their dive, they will spread their
Speaker 1: tail feathers out and they'll make this really loud beeping
Speaker 1: noise like babe, what yeah, oh my god, And then
Speaker 1: the ladies like, oh, okay, exactly, they'll do this right
Speaker 1: in front of the female.
Speaker 3: Okay, side note, I looked it up, and here is
Speaker 3: the noise of an Anna's hummingbird showing off flying abilities
Speaker 3: and trying to get laid. As described way more tastefully
Speaker 3: by a vintage Britannica Encyclopedia film.
Speaker 4: The courtship is marked by extraordinary displays by the male,
Speaker 4: who swoops, dashes, and soars high until he is almost
Speaker 4: out of sight, then dives back down at a speed
Speaker 4: that may reach sixty miles an hour.
Speaker 3: Now this behavior is called a courtship dance in birds
Speaker 3: and thirstiness or a flex in human primates when it
Speaker 3: comes to plumage and colors and displays, like what's your favorite,
Speaker 3: Like what's what's the most dazzlinger?
Speaker 1: Well, it's hard to argue with the birds of Paradise.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Okay, they've got it all. You know,
Speaker 1: they've got some of the most elaborate plumage out there.
Speaker 1: You think a peacock's tail is elaborate, and it's definitely
Speaker 1: very elaborate. But kind of the structures that you can
Speaker 1: see in different species of birds of Paradise are more
Speaker 1: elaborate than I would say any other family of birds
Speaker 1: out there. These are birds that only live on New Guinea.
Speaker 1: And one cool thing is that as elaborate as their plumages,
Speaker 1: they have equally elaborate dances to go along with them.
Speaker 1: So they're not only like they don't just have this plumage,
Speaker 1: but they have very specific ways that they show it off. Magic.
Speaker 3: That's fun.
Speaker 1: There's this one species that almost does like a little
Speaker 1: ballet dance where it actually dances like under the female
Speaker 1: and it will show off in intervals like it has
Speaker 1: this kind of shield on its breast and like the
Speaker 1: female will be looking down from above and it'll flash
Speaker 1: it to her. Yeah, and that's just one species. They're
Speaker 1: just amazing. There's a really good documentary that the Cornell
Speaker 1: Lab of Ornthology and National Geographics put together that I
Speaker 1: highly recommend. Okay, it's really fun. What about.
Speaker 3: Do you have a collection of feathers? If you see them,
Speaker 3: do you pick them up? Or is that disgusting? Are
Speaker 3: they full of mites?
Speaker 1: Well that's actually a great question, and one thing I'd
Speaker 1: like to tell all of the listeners out there is
Speaker 1: technically it's illegal to pick up feathers off the ground.
Speaker 1: What yes, What if it's on your property, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So there's this law called the International Migratory
Speaker 1: Bird Treaty Act. Okay, I believe it was nineteen eighteen
Speaker 1: was the year it was founded. And basically it says
Speaker 1: that possession of any part of a migratory bird is
Speaker 1: illegal because they don't know if that came from a
Speaker 1: feather you found off the ground or a living bird feather. So,
Speaker 1: as a museum scientist, you know, I do collect these things,
Speaker 1: so I have you know, I have a special permit
Speaker 1: that will allow me to pick these things up. And
Speaker 1: you know, also dead birds because you know, we're a museum,
Speaker 1: we were into that sort of thing and bring them
Speaker 1: into the collection.
Speaker 3: And so do you take them and then sort of
Speaker 3: note where you found them and when and exactly what
Speaker 3: it might be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you know, I usually won't pick up single feathers.
Speaker 1: It's much more interesting and of use to me if
Speaker 1: I have the whole bird. So I like find a
Speaker 1: dead bird, for example. So but absolut little loves in
Speaker 1: your car, purel what a little you know, baggies.
Speaker 3: I mean you're talking to someone. I have a couple
Speaker 3: of dead birds in my freezer right now, and I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's illegal, but you.
Speaker 1: Should bring them in, I know, take them here in
Speaker 1: the museum. I got to make sure that I'm not
Speaker 1: going to get in prisoned. It'll be okay.
Speaker 3: So if someone finds a dead bird, can they call
Speaker 3: up a museum and say, hey, I've got a.
Speaker 1: Yeah, please do call up your local museum. You know,
Speaker 1: that's one one of the main ways we're growing our
Speaker 1: collection these days is people are bringing you know, give
Speaker 1: us dead or let us know about dead birds, and
Speaker 1: then we arrange pick up of the dead bird. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we get We build our collection by three four
Speaker 1: hundred birds that every year that way, either by people
Speaker 1: bringing them in or wildlife rehabilitators. But the key is
Speaker 1: just noting the date and where you found it.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: Without those two pieces of information, the unfortunately the bird
Speaker 1: will be of much less use for research. Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I don't know why, but at some point I
Speaker 3: started to look up can you eat feathers? And some birds,
Speaker 3: like grebe can eat their own feathers to line their stomachs,
Speaker 3: which protects them from getting internally shanked by fish spines.
Speaker 3: They eat their own feathers on purpose, but as human people,
Speaker 3: it won't do much for us to chow down on down.
Speaker 3: Until recently some researchers were trying to figure out what
Speaker 3: to do with the feather waste from poultry farms. And
Speaker 3: it turns out when the little handy acid hydrolysis and
Speaker 3: then adjusting the pH to neutral, feathers can be dried
Speaker 3: and powdered and they're like ninety percent protein. Now, there
Speaker 3: was one twenty eighteen study published in the Journal of
Speaker 3: the International Society of Sports Nutrition. I thumbed through those
Speaker 3: all the time, and researchers found that feather caratin protein
Speaker 3: from chicken feathers helped participants put on more lean body
Speaker 3: mass than dairy protein did. Now, did the feather protein
Speaker 3: have a waxy texture in the mouth?
Speaker 1: Yes? Did some participants like that? They sure did?
Speaker 3: And really, is it any weirder to eat melted feathers
Speaker 3: than it is to drink from the teat of a cow?
Speaker 3: I mean, shake a tail feather more like tail feather shake? Oh,
Speaker 3: speaking of question about peacock feather is how do they
Speaker 3: fly with those ding dangtails?
Speaker 1: Well, they don't fly well, okay, so that's actually you know,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of birds that have really long
Speaker 1: tails and oftentimes it's actually kind of a handicap for males.
Speaker 1: So it's like, oh, if the male can actually survive
Speaker 1: and do well with the super long tail that like
Speaker 1: prohibits it from being good at flying, then probably it's
Speaker 1: a pretty healthy bird. And that's you know, I want
Speaker 1: to actually pass those genes onto my offspring. So that's
Speaker 1: actually you know, how these crazy taiales have evolved. It's
Speaker 1: what we call runaway sexual selection, where females will choose
Speaker 1: a trait and then you know, it'll become more and
Speaker 1: more elaborate over time.
Speaker 3: Are you guilty of a term pickup artist called peacocking? Well,
Speaker 3: that is also known as runaway sexual selection because it
Speaker 3: makes people want to run away from you. Now, what
Speaker 3: about different color plumages? Like what range are we talking? Like?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Can they go everything from like opal escent to obviously black?
Speaker 3: Like what colors have you seen working in?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a great question. So one of my favorite
Speaker 1: topics bird colors. Okay, birds can come in every color
Speaker 1: of the rainbow, including colors that we can't see. Really, yes,
Speaker 1: did you know that birds, other birds can see colors
Speaker 1: that we can't see. So birds can actually see ultraviolet
Speaker 1: colors so they can't do that. Okay, so we can see.
Speaker 1: If you think about what is color, it's actually wavelengths
Speaker 1: of light that are We have cone cells in our
Speaker 1: eye that will you know, be activated or not by
Speaker 1: certain wavelengths, and that gets translated into our brain as
Speaker 1: a color. Think about humans, there's a lot of variation
Speaker 1: in terms of what color people can see. There's you know,
Speaker 1: colorblind people, for example. So we have three types of
Speaker 1: cones in our eyes that can see from about four
Speaker 1: hundred to seven hundred nanimeters. But birds actually have four
Speaker 1: types of cones in their eyes, so they have a
Speaker 1: whole other kind of cone, and that cone resides from
Speaker 1: about three hundred to four hundred nanimeters, so they can
Speaker 1: actually see from three hundred to seven hundred nanimeters. So
Speaker 1: there could be disco birds out there that we have
Speaker 1: no idea about. That there could be. I actually, you know,
Speaker 1: I brought a few birds out here with me, and
Speaker 1: one of the birds that I brought was this bird
Speaker 1: called a palm tannager. So tannagers are the kind of
Speaker 1: special family that I study a lot of. So this bird,
Speaker 1: you look at it, it looks, you know, pretty kind
Speaker 1: of grayish yellowish, not that exciting. It's actually related to
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of extremely colorful tannagers. Just google Tangara
Speaker 1: tannagers and you'll see these like amazing plumages, and people like,
Speaker 1: why is it in this genus? It's kind of drab, loicking.
Speaker 1: It's not that exciting. But if you actually look at
Speaker 1: this plumage using what's called a reflectant spectro photometer, which
Speaker 1: is a machine that we use to actually objectively measure
Speaker 1: how much light is coming off of feathers at certain wavelengths,
Speaker 1: you can see that almost all of the reflectance is
Speaker 1: in the ultraviolet. So this bird would be much much
Speaker 1: brighter to a bird than it is to us.
Speaker 3: So it looks kind of like an olive color, like
Speaker 3: an army green, grayish color. But it might be just
Speaker 3: holographic disco bird.
Speaker 1: I mean, probably not holographic disco bird, but it would
Speaker 1: be quite a bit brighter.
Speaker 3: Do you think it would be green in the green area,
Speaker 3: like greenish dub so UV.
Speaker 1: Is much more like purpleish. Okay, yeah, so it's probably.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's hard to say because I can't see
Speaker 1: we can't see it, and it's you know, it's not
Speaker 1: even that we can't see uv colors except with this
Speaker 1: whole extra type of cone. It's like there's a whole
Speaker 1: nother dimension of color that birds can see that we're missing.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So Allison says, she gets asked a lot about her
Speaker 3: favorite bird feathers, and one that she loves is a
Speaker 3: fruit eater from Africa called a torocco. Now, toroccos are
Speaker 3: about the size of a parrot that are not parrots,
Speaker 3: but they have a deep green olive plumage with red
Speaker 3: underneath their wings. We might be like green bird, So
Speaker 3: what how dare us? So? Their green color is super
Speaker 3: super special to plumologists, Like if feather experts were your
Speaker 3: friend who collects vinyl, toroccos would be like a platinum
Speaker 3: edition signed copy.
Speaker 1: Why are the fuss? So most green and birds is
Speaker 1: made by blue feather structure plus yellow pigments. And so
Speaker 1: if you think about like mixing fingerpaints together blue and yellow,
Speaker 1: what is equal equals green? But these birds actually have
Speaker 1: a true green pigment and it's a copper based pigment
Speaker 1: and it was the first pigment to be described in birds.
Speaker 1: But it's the one that we know some of the
Speaker 1: least about. So someone's got to get on there exactly.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I love about our museum
Speaker 1: collection here is we actually have a lot of East
Speaker 1: African birds. We have almost all toroccos represented.
Speaker 3: Why in some regions of the world are birds more
Speaker 3: drab and why in other areas they're flashy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great question. So for the most part,
Speaker 1: birds are more brightly colored in the tropics, and so
Speaker 1: there have been a lot of hypotheses proposed as to
Speaker 1: why that is. You think about it. Just think about
Speaker 1: the environment that birds are living in. For one, there's
Speaker 1: generally there's more food year round. There a lot of
Speaker 1: birds there don't migrate, so they don't have to worry
Speaker 1: about this really expensive migration which happens, you know, once
Speaker 1: a year. And also one thing to keep about I
Speaker 1: was going to save this for the flum flam question,
Speaker 1: but I will debunk the flum flum now, is that
Speaker 1: when you see a bird that's really brightly colored, like
Speaker 1: a parrot, for example, you have to think about where
Speaker 1: it's coming from. And actually these bright you know, bright
Speaker 1: a bright green parrot. We think of it as being bright,
Speaker 1: but it's actually very cryptic in the habitat that it's from.
Speaker 1: And so you know, if you ever try and find
Speaker 1: a parrot in a green tree, you'll very quickly understand
Speaker 1: that these birds are actually super hard to see. And
Speaker 1: so you know, if you ever go birding in the tropics,
Speaker 1: they'll actually find it's very difficult to see many birds.
Speaker 1: And it's because you know, there's this great variety of
Speaker 1: habitats and light environments and there's you know, that makes
Speaker 1: it really hard to see all these birds.
Speaker 3: There are some flocks of parrots in La. Yes, do
Speaker 3: you ever get to see them? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we see. I see them almost every day. You know,
Speaker 1: there's the yellow chevron parakeets. Will you know come and
Speaker 1: feed in some of our trees here at the museum.
Speaker 3: Is it true or false that some of those parrots,
Speaker 3: the green parrots, were like a there was like a
Speaker 3: pet store fire and burbank.
Speaker 1: Have you heard that HYPI I have heard that urban legend. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're false. Probably there's a grain of truth there. I mean,
Speaker 1: the truth is that so we've got ten to twelve
Speaker 1: species of parrots here in LA that are now what
Speaker 1: we call naturalized, which means they're breeding. And so all
Speaker 1: of these birds came from the pet trade.
Speaker 3: Parrots, by the bye, are from tropical and subtropical regions,
Speaker 3: so like not Southern California, from elsewhere. These stunning beauties
Speaker 3: arrived here on the hopes they'd make someone a book,
Speaker 3: but they ended up breaking free of the system and
Speaker 3: then just bubbling about kind of aimless, just like most
Speaker 3: of us LA transplants.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's probably a combination of pets getting away,
Speaker 1: you know, potentially shipments of birds getting loose. It makes
Speaker 1: sense that if you have like a small flock, for example,
Speaker 1: it'd be more likely that they would become established. And
Speaker 1: so you know, a pet store fire could have had
Speaker 1: something to do with it, but probably not everything.
Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, I told Alison that I see some in
Speaker 3: my neighborhood when I go for walks, which lately have
Speaker 3: been more frequent.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the red crown parrots up there.
Speaker 3: Yes, And I think that's what we I think that's
Speaker 3: what I see. And I heard them at night just
Speaker 3: they're so loud and I could not I was like,
Speaker 3: what animal is that?
Speaker 1: And I realized later that it was a parrot.
Speaker 3: But I get so excited when I see them, It's like.
Speaker 1: Whoa I know, it's fun that I love seeing the
Speaker 1: of parents, and you know, they're very apparent when they're
Speaker 1: coming because they're so loud.
Speaker 3: How come there aren't more blue birds that would blend
Speaker 3: in with the sky?
Speaker 1: Oh good question. So part of that has to do
Speaker 1: with how blue is made. So let's circle back to
Speaker 1: that point that I was making earlier about how bird
Speaker 1: colors are made. So they're two main ways that birds
Speaker 1: can make colors. I mean, not just there are only
Speaker 1: two ways that birds can make colors. One is by
Speaker 1: refracting color off of the structure of their feathers, so
Speaker 1: that means when light comes in, it's you know, reflected
Speaker 1: at a certain wavelengths might be reflected based on how
Speaker 1: the feather nanostructure, so how the feather molecules are shaped.
Speaker 1: And the other is based on pigments that absorb certain
Speaker 1: wavelengths of color.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, okay, So color can be straight up pigment
Speaker 3: or structural.
Speaker 1: Got it. So you know we talked about melanin, So
Speaker 1: browns and blacks, those are all melanin molecules. So that's
Speaker 1: you know, melanin is a pig that absorbs almost all
Speaker 1: wavelengths of light. There's a pigment called carotenoids, which is
Speaker 1: the other most common bird pigment. So this is produces
Speaker 1: almost all oranges, yellows, and reds and birds, but blue
Speaker 1: and birds is not produced by pigment. It's produced by
Speaker 1: the feather structure. Oh okay, yeah, And so you know
Speaker 1: it might be harder to evolve a blue feather structure,
Speaker 1: for example. That's kind of the evolution of these coloration mechanisms.
Speaker 1: It's something that's some you know, somewhat new and kind
Speaker 1: of up and coming in the field. Ah, that's so interesting.
Speaker 1: I never knew that.
Speaker 3: Okay. So I look this up and it's almost like
Speaker 3: there's a spongy layer made of keratin and air that
Speaker 3: sits on top of a melonin layer, and it's the
Speaker 3: structure of that sponge that throws light in the blue
Speaker 3: range back. Now, iridescent colors have a few layers of
Speaker 3: melanin that scatter light depending on your angle to the
Speaker 3: sun and the feather.
Speaker 1: Now, all of.
Speaker 3: This is happening deep in the teeny barbs and our
Speaker 3: bules to make up birds in all shapes and sizes
Speaker 3: and degrees of flamboyance. What about head crests? Is that
Speaker 3: mostly just display.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there are certain regions of the bird that
Speaker 1: you know, we might often see more colorful. And crests
Speaker 1: are are one way that birds can use for display
Speaker 1: and for social signaling. And one kind of convenient thing
Speaker 1: for birds about crests and head in these crest colors
Speaker 1: is that they can show them off when they want to,
Speaker 1: or they can hide them when they don't. They can
Speaker 1: do and just have it up exactly so then when
Speaker 1: they want to show off to you know, their lady
Speaker 1: or their you know, their guy, depending, you know, because
Speaker 1: sexual selection works both ways. It's not just females, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get males. Males try and get females too.
Speaker 1: But you know, when there's maybe they're foraging and they
Speaker 1: don't want to be attracting a predator, they can put
Speaker 1: down their crest and make themselves less conspicuous. That's genius.
Speaker 1: Never realize that, you know the ultimate crest. Huh. This
Speaker 1: bird called a monarch flycatcher, what is it? Flycatcher is
Speaker 1: a bird. It's an insectivorous bird, but it literally the
Speaker 1: crest looks like a crown. It's called a monarch because
Speaker 1: it looks like a crown. It's this bright orange and blue.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend googling.
Speaker 3: Doctor Schultz because she's awesome. Emailed me after our chat
Speaker 3: to let me know that she meant to say royal flycatcher,
Speaker 3: not a monarch flycatcher.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: She also attached a picture of a royal flycatcher. And y'all,
Speaker 3: imagine if on your face you grew like a traffic cone,
Speaker 3: orange polka dotted fan, just a fan right between your eyes.
Speaker 3: It's funky, it's bold. Now in the photo she sent,
Speaker 3: the bird's mouth is just slightly open and the quarters
Speaker 3: look kind of raised in an expression that reads.
Speaker 1: I know right, that's right girl.
Speaker 3: Now, I will now change the subject to bird legs.
Speaker 3: Owl legs so hairy? Who knew?
Speaker 1: Does it? Does it ever freak you out? That owls
Speaker 1: have such long legs that they're just covered in furry pantalons?
Speaker 1: That's good? Yeah, so that's another You're full of great questions.
Speaker 1: I'm so many. I'm just peppering you with so many?
Speaker 1: Is such a barrage? Yeah? So, first of all, actually
Speaker 1: a lot of birds do have much longer legs than
Speaker 1: you think they are. They're just cover there. They kind
Speaker 1: of will hold them close to their body cavity, so
Speaker 1: you don't realize just how long bird legs are and fury.
Speaker 1: I think furry owl eggs are so cool. God, they're
Speaker 1: so cute. Yeah, very weird. Yeah, so you know, probably
Speaker 1: has something to do with both from a regulation. You know. Actually,
Speaker 1: owls aren't the only ones that have furry legs. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of birds that live on ice and
Speaker 1: snow like these birds called ptarmigans also have furry fury
Speaker 1: legs and free feet, so keep them warm. Not all
Speaker 1: owls have fury legs, only some of them.
Speaker 3: Do you sign important paperwork with a quill pen?
Speaker 1: I don't, but I should. That's a great idea. I
Speaker 1: like it.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are many many YouTube videos that can usher
Speaker 3: you on a rabbit hole of making your own authentic
Speaker 3: goose quill ink pen. And they involve baking the quill
Speaker 3: in a skillet of hot sand to cure it and
Speaker 3: then slicing it at a precise angle. And I watched
Speaker 3: several with just wrapped curiosity, and then I saw them
Speaker 3: use the quill to write, and they can write like
Speaker 3: one splotchy word before having to redip it, And I
Speaker 3: was like, fuck this dude, uniball gel pens and indoor
Speaker 3: plumbing forever antibiotics.
Speaker 1: I'm good with modern times. Thanks.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, quill pens can hold much ink. But what
Speaker 3: about the feather barbs? What can those things stop up?
Speaker 1: Can I just tell you a quick feather effect? That's so. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's like this really unknown but really cool species of
Speaker 1: bird called a sand grouse. So there's a species that
Speaker 1: lives in the desert and actually the adult birds have
Speaker 1: very specialized belly feathers that hold water, and so they'll
Speaker 1: fly for like kilometers every day to the watering hole
Speaker 1: and so their bellies and then fly back to their
Speaker 1: baby birds and bring them back these like you know
Speaker 1: water so they can drink it. So they actually like
Speaker 1: you know, drink the water from the belly of the
Speaker 1: adult bird. Oh that's and they're these really cool looking
Speaker 1: like spirally feathers if you look at them under a microscope.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so I look these up and instead of
Speaker 3: straight barbs, they're helical, kind of like a curly ribbon
Speaker 3: on some.
Speaker 1: Festive gift wrap.
Speaker 3: Just slurbrenov water for the bibis. So next time you're
Speaker 3: in the kitchen, just like dunk your perm in a
Speaker 3: two liter of mountain dew. Suck a drive back at
Speaker 3: your desk, which is now a card table in the garage.
Speaker 3: Now we're about to get to Patreon questions, so many
Speaker 3: good ones, but before we do, each week we donate
Speaker 3: to a charity of the ologist choosing, and this week
Speaker 3: Alison chose the Ornithological Council, which is at birdnet dot
Speaker 3: org slash oc. Now. They do a lot of great
Speaker 3: work to connect ornithologists to the public, including with policymakers.
Speaker 3: They provide timely information about birds to help ensure scientifically
Speaker 3: based decision and management actions. They're also very helpful for
Speaker 3: all things permit related, she says. So a donation went
Speaker 3: to them, and that was made possible by sponsors of
Speaker 3: the show, which you may hear about.
Speaker 1: Now get value.
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Speaker 3: Okay, and now back to the feather questions that tickle
Speaker 3: your curiosity. Alison Terry wants to know do feathers really
Speaker 3: carry diseases?
Speaker 1: Birds do carry diseases, and certainly like contact is one
Speaker 1: of the ways that diseases get carried. So just like
Speaker 1: we care diseases on our hands, I mean birds carried well,
Speaker 1: they'll carry diseases on their feathers as well.
Speaker 3: Yep. We recorded this in late February, before COVID nineteen
Speaker 3: had really started to hit its global stride, before we
Speaker 3: all began to diligently milk our thumbs in a sudsy
Speaker 3: Panic milk your thumbs.
Speaker 1: No, birds also have parasites. They'll have lice, for example,
Speaker 1: and those can carry diseases. So it is true. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't you know, thinking about like you find a feather
Speaker 1: on a ground. Yeah, I'm not super worried about getting
Speaker 1: a disease from that, because most diseases from birds don't
Speaker 1: jump to humans. Although that's not necessarily true wesnel virus.
Speaker 1: For example, maybe don't pick up a dead crow that
Speaker 1: you see, okay, unless you're a museum. Unless you're a museum.
Speaker 3: If you find a feather, and though it's illegal to
Speaker 3: take it home with you, yes, if you were to say,
Speaker 3: spray it with like an alcohol solution, won't that be okay?
Speaker 1: You know, if a feather's been on the ground for
Speaker 1: a while. Most most parasites will disperse very quickly once
Speaker 1: they're not attached to like a living host anymore. Is
Speaker 1: they're like, there's no more food, okay, I want to leave.
Speaker 1: And a lot of diseases also will disperse pretty quickly, so.
Speaker 3: You're probably not whe you're going to die from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, of all the things.
Speaker 3: Now, the folks who ask that, by the bye were
Speaker 3: Melissa Vono, James Huffstetler, Alison Touri, Jessica Chamberlain, Kira Goin,
Speaker 3: and Jesse Dragon. And yes, I check that out. And
Speaker 3: I didn't know that wes nol virus is a mosquito
Speaker 3: transmitted disease that has.
Speaker 1: Corvids as a reservoir.
Speaker 3: That was news to me. Also, let's just make a
Speaker 3: pact right now. Let's not pick up too much dead
Speaker 3: stuff right now.
Speaker 1: Let's keep your hands clean.
Speaker 3: Learn a lot of valuable lessons these days. Nobody poach
Speaker 3: any panguins. All right, agreed, appreciate it. Tanaysha Bruno wants
Speaker 3: to know first time question.
Speaker 1: Answer, by the way, why do birds.
Speaker 3: Grow feathers as opposed to fur or hair?
Speaker 1: That's a great question, and that's, you know, due to
Speaker 1: evolutionary history. So hair and fur evolved in the lineage
Speaker 1: of mammals, which of course branched off from you know,
Speaker 1: the relative, the common relative of both birds and mammals,
Speaker 1: long before either hair or feathers existed. So it's you
Speaker 1: never know what evolution is going to come up with.
Speaker 1: But you know, in the case of mammals, it came
Speaker 1: up with fur, and in the case of dinosaurs, actually
Speaker 1: it came up with feathers, and these proto feathers because
Speaker 1: before they came the complex feathers that we know of today.
Speaker 3: So just roll of the DNA mutation dice, I would say.
Speaker 3: So Emen Monroe asked, is it true that if eagles
Speaker 3: or other birds they're not sure, lose a feather on
Speaker 3: one wing, they'll lose the equivalent feather on the other
Speaker 3: side to balance.
Speaker 1: Generally, that's not true, so they'll they'll grow a new
Speaker 1: feather in if they lose one feather. But when you
Speaker 1: do see kind of equivalent lost feathers on both sides
Speaker 1: is when they're actually molting them off. So you know,
Speaker 1: when they're molting all, it's all pretty timed, and so
Speaker 1: they'll lose the same feather kind of on both sides.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 3: Are there certain seasons where you're bound to find more
Speaker 3: feathers on the ground.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely during I would say transitional times. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of birds will some birds molt in the fall,
Speaker 1: some birds molt kind of in the spring before breeding season. Generally,
Speaker 1: you won't find many feathers during the breeding season because
Speaker 1: birds don't want to do expensive things like feeding young
Speaker 1: and molt at the same time.
Speaker 3: Oh and by the bye, when a feather is molted,
Speaker 3: how does a new one come in? Will it grows
Speaker 3: in as a pin feather or a blood feather, and
Speaker 3: it looks like a spike and it's filled with blood
Speaker 3: to help it grow, and birds have to nip and
Speaker 3: preen the keratin sheath off of it as it grows.
Speaker 3: And also if it breaks off mid growth, it can
Speaker 3: just spurt blood. So bird owners you got to look
Speaker 3: out for pokey blood faucet pin feathers as they grow
Speaker 3: in also understandably pin feathers a little sore, a little
Speaker 3: out sheet birds are like back off, I'm feeling a
Speaker 3: little bitchy. I'm imagining it must be a lot like PMS,
Speaker 3: only without as many snacks or crying at commercials. Is
Speaker 3: it ever really frustrating for bird watchers to know that, Like,
Speaker 3: you see a bird, and not only do you have
Speaker 3: to know what the bird's plumage like, you need to
Speaker 3: know what both sexes and different times of the year
Speaker 3: they might have different different ages.
Speaker 1: Now ages sometimes young birds will have, you know, different
Speaker 1: plumage goals are the worst they've got well or the best,
Speaker 1: I guess, depending on your perspective. They've got different plumages
Speaker 1: until they're like four years old basically, So you know,
Speaker 1: I think for a beginning burder that would be potentially frustrating. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think for you know, more experienced burders, that's
Speaker 1: actually viewed as like one of the cool things. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a challenge, like what is this burd Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: leveling up exactly. Mo Casey.
Speaker 3: First time question answer wants to know how do waterproof
Speaker 3: feathers work? Primarily on puffins because they are the cutest,
Speaker 3: but other waterproof birds are good too, so that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, most feathers on birds are waterproof to some extent.
Speaker 1: You know, on a feather on bird like a puffin
Speaker 1: or even a penguin that spends a lot of time,
Speaker 1: there'll be certain density that's going to make it very
Speaker 1: difficult for water to go in. So in a bird,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of an on the opposite side of things,
Speaker 1: a bird called an anhinga for example, this is a
Speaker 1: bird that dives underwater that actually has very dense barbs
Speaker 1: and feather barbules, and so this actually helps them to
Speaker 1: dive down because they don't have all the air trapped,
Speaker 1: but because water will get in. Then you see them
Speaker 1: standing with their wings outstretched, and so cormorants will do
Speaker 1: this sometimes too, and so they're actually drying themselves up.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I always wondered why they don't get chili.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cool, Well they probably do get a little bit
Speaker 1: like but you know, even like like these like puffins,
Speaker 1: for example, that live in cold places, are penguins, they've
Speaker 1: got some of the most numbers of feathers on them.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think the most is a swan, which
Speaker 1: I think has like I looked it up, like twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand feathers on it. Yeah, the tundraswan, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: The least number of feathers counted as a ruby throated hummingbird,
Speaker 1: which has like nine hundred and sixty five or something
Speaker 1: like that. So see, there's a huge variation on how
Speaker 1: many feathers you have. And if you have waterproof feathers
Speaker 1: and you have this really nice down you layer, then
Speaker 1: you've got like a really awesome wetsuit basically, so you're
Speaker 1: going to be fine from cold.
Speaker 3: And unlike our wetsuits, birds never have to strip it
Speaker 3: off on the side of Pacific Coast Highway and shake
Speaker 3: sand out.
Speaker 1: Of the crotch.
Speaker 3: Oh Robin Caun wants to know what is up with
Speaker 3: emu feathers, and they're double feathers.
Speaker 1: Do EMUs have double feathers? Yeah, so that the double
Speaker 1: feathers a feather called an after feather. So you know
Speaker 1: that's just true if some birds, some birds have that,
Speaker 1: and this is especially true of birds that are flightless
Speaker 1: so EMUs, for example, they can't fly right, same with
Speaker 1: cassowerries kiwis ostriches. This is these are all birds called
Speaker 1: rat heights. Once you lose that flight constrain, your others
Speaker 1: can do a lot more things because they you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about being aerodynamic anymore or
Speaker 1: having these flight feathers, so then they can evolve. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of them have lost their hooklets that hook
Speaker 1: them together. You know, think about like an emu plumage.
Speaker 1: They're pretty furry looking. Yeah, it's kind of like hairy
Speaker 1: m hm. And so that's just it's because they don't
Speaker 1: have to fly anymore, so they can use their feathers
Speaker 1: for other things.
Speaker 3: This next question came from patron Katie Coast.
Speaker 1: How do I feel about feathers in fashion? I think
Speaker 1: as long as they're ethically sourced feathers, I have no
Speaker 1: problem with that. So because like birds lose their feathers,
Speaker 1: you know, once a year or something like that, so
Speaker 1: so they're around, Yeah, they're around. I don't say anything
Speaker 1: wrong with using those feathers. I've got some questions.
Speaker 3: Some hot goss Oka tea has been requested to be
Speaker 3: spilled Davis Bourne and first time question asker Chelsea want
Speaker 3: to know a little bit about Edwin Rist's Great feather
Speaker 3: heist of two thousand and nine and how you feel
Speaker 3: about it? How does the feather community feel about it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I'll speak more from the museum community, ornithologist
Speaker 1: community than the feather community.
Speaker 3: So quick background. So in two thousand and nine, a
Speaker 3: then twenty two year old American floutist posed as a
Speaker 3: photographer and cased a vault in the London Museum of
Speaker 3: Natural History, then came back with a suitcase at night
Speaker 3: and made off with nearly three hundred specimens to sell
Speaker 3: on the fly fishing black market, then use the money
Speaker 3: to buy a nice flute. He never even served jail time.
Speaker 3: He just moved to Germany and now he posts heavy
Speaker 3: metal flute videos on YouTube under the username heavy metal
Speaker 3: Flute and he goes by Edwin Reinhardt, a nom de
Speaker 3: plume if you will. He's just living his life like
Speaker 3: no big deal. So what does Alison think of this caper?
Speaker 1: You know, it does make me worry as a bird curator,
Speaker 1: which is you know, my job. I worry, you know,
Speaker 1: is somebody going to come in and try and steal
Speaker 1: some of my birds to sell in the black market.
Speaker 1: It's a real fear, you know, museums. Yeah, some security,
Speaker 1: but you know there may be some holes in the
Speaker 1: security potentially, and so you know, I think it really
Speaker 1: was eye opening to the museum community with just you know,
Speaker 1: how vigilant we need to be. And it was honestly,
Speaker 1: it was a tragedy. I feel very sad because of it.
Speaker 1: This two hundred and ninety nine birds were stolen from
Speaker 1: the Tring Museum in the UK and a lot of
Speaker 1: these birds are irreplaceable. They are very rare species. Some
Speaker 1: of them collected by Alfred Russell Wallace. They come Patriot
Speaker 1: of Charles Darwin. Yeah, and yeah, they're they're they're things
Speaker 1: that we will never be able to get back. So
Speaker 1: it's just super sad. And they're out there somewhere, some
Speaker 1: of them are you know, they're sold on the black
Speaker 1: market for fly tying. Yeah waste, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just the they did recover some of the feathers or
Speaker 1: some of the birds back, but and some of them,
Speaker 1: you know, the tags had been removed, so we didn't
Speaker 1: know where and when those birds are from. And so
Speaker 1: if we don't have those data, a specimen becomes virtually useless.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this is all coming back to me now.
Speaker 1: And now I'm starting the book The Feather Thief by
Speaker 1: Kirk Johnson has It's really good. I recommend it.
Speaker 3: Oh what a wow, that guy, he's gonna get a
Speaker 3: surprised it.
Speaker 1: Don't tar and feather in Yeah, I mean that's right.
Speaker 3: It would be very very apt, just in like sustainable
Speaker 3: feathers PS. Tar and feathering people as a form of
Speaker 3: ridicule and punishment started at least in the twelfth century,
Speaker 3: that long ago, and in the United States, unruly mobs
Speaker 3: would go around punishing people with it. And as someone
Speaker 3: who has waxed various parts of her body, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go on record and say it sounds real awful.
Speaker 3: And this next question was asked by patron Kelly Brockington.
Speaker 3: Do you have any idea some people are asking why
Speaker 3: some folks are allergic to certain feather and down pillows.
Speaker 1: Different structures. There are some birds have these feathers called
Speaker 1: powder down feathers, which are instead of being molted, they're
Speaker 1: continue usually grown and they actually will like fragment, so
Speaker 1: they'll produce kind of a white powder especially two in
Speaker 1: birds like herons, for example, and so yeah, I say,
Speaker 1: you know, most down feather pillows and things are probably
Speaker 1: from like geese and chickens, but there could be some
Speaker 1: varieties that maybe have the slightly different feather structure for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, which could cause that.
Speaker 3: Have you ever had to pluck a bird like pluck
Speaker 3: a goose?
Speaker 1: Yes, you have? Yeah, what was the deal? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the ways that we actually preserve bird specimens
Speaker 1: here at the museum is will skeletonize things. And so
Speaker 1: you know, one of the steps of skeletonizing things can
Speaker 1: be removing the feathers. Now, I save those feathers because
Speaker 1: they're useful for research, you know. It's it's it's it
Speaker 1: is what it is? Yeah, is it? Are they hard
Speaker 1: to pluck? They are? Some of them. The feathers are
Speaker 1: really stuck in there.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, I bet that hurts so much if someone
Speaker 3: plucks one out.
Speaker 1: Of them, right, well, they're not alive. But if you
Speaker 1: were one, let's say, oh, yeah, no, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think I mean a certain you know, especially
Speaker 1: the flight feathers for example, and the tail feathers those
Speaker 1: are those can be actually stuck in the bone. You know,
Speaker 1: if you look at the some of the bones in
Speaker 1: an avian wing, they actually have little knobs where the
Speaker 1: quills hook it. Yeah, all the way through well not
Speaker 1: not through the bone, but like a yeah, oh my gosh.
Speaker 3: I once got a chicken from Trader Joe's and it
Speaker 3: still had feathers on its butt. I had to pluck
Speaker 3: them before I cooked it.
Speaker 1: I do you feel about that?
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm not equipped for this that and
Speaker 3: like when you roast like a five pound chicken, it
Speaker 3: just is a lot like a human infant and it's uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: you know, But then having to pluck feathers from its
Speaker 3: butt only on the butt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I took pictures.
Speaker 3: Okay, oh, let's see Succi Seth Succi. First time question
Speaker 3: asker wants to know what's the weirdest feather?
Speaker 1: Ooh, the weirdest feather? I would I mean, that's such
Speaker 1: an interesting question. So they're okay, I'm gonna give two examples. One,
Speaker 1: there's some cool feathers on the bird of Paradise that
Speaker 1: are like totally bizarre, Like on the Kingbird of Paradise
Speaker 1: on the one of their above their tail, the feather
Speaker 1: is super long. Racis so it's bear bear, bear bear
Speaker 1: until the very end, and it has this little green
Speaker 1: curly cue. No, it's really cool looking feather.
Speaker 3: She showed me these later in collections, and y'all they
Speaker 3: looked like lollipops, like lollipops made out of iridescent emerald
Speaker 3: green feathers.
Speaker 1: It was wild.
Speaker 3: Oh, those tail feathers are just like what would be
Speaker 3: the evolutionary advantage of having a tail feather that is
Speaker 3: really long with a rosette at the end track.
Speaker 1: More ladies, spread your genes, that's the only advantage.
Speaker 3: Just aesthetics, Yeah, just creatures are drawn to aesthetics.
Speaker 1: It's art.
Speaker 3: And then other birds at Paradise have this fluffy plumage.
Speaker 3: If you've ever seen a video of David Attenburg being
Speaker 3: savagely interrupted by a bird, that's the one.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: Still, other birds of Paradise are dark, velvety black. We'll
Speaker 3: talk about those types of feathers in a minute. There's
Speaker 3: also the king of Saxony bird of Paradise that has
Speaker 3: two long striped feathers on either side of its head,
Speaker 3: way longer than its body. And then there's a bower
Speaker 3: bird that looks for that species, molted head feathers and
Speaker 3: then uses them as a brag to get ladies into
Speaker 3: his lair. Feathers.
Speaker 1: Man, it's a whole world.
Speaker 3: This episode should have been like ten parts long.
Speaker 1: There are some other feathers. Another really cool feather is
Speaker 1: this bird called the club winged mannequin. So there's this
Speaker 1: little bird from the tropics that actually these mannequins they'll
Speaker 1: make sounds. They use their flight feathers with sound. And
Speaker 1: the club wing mannequin the feather the shaft part his
Speaker 1: with is very thick and kind of dense and heavy
Speaker 1: because it actually will bang them together to make like
Speaker 1: a clicking noise.
Speaker 3: Ooh okay, I look this up and the Cornell Lab
Speaker 3: of Ornithology had video of a little black and white
Speaker 3: and brown birdie with a russet crown and a little
Speaker 3: like scarlet pompadour. That that is a very cute and
Speaker 3: tiny way to scream.
Speaker 1: I'm horny.
Speaker 3: Warm.
Speaker 1: Devin Galdaro wants to know.
Speaker 3: First time question asker, Yeah, how is it we can
Speaker 3: keep feathers we find for years and they don't decompose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so, you know, We've got feathers in our
Speaker 1: collection that are from well bird specimens that are of
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years old. And so the key
Speaker 1: for keeping a feather in good quality is to keep
Speaker 1: it out of the light, because light can degrade feathers
Speaker 1: and keep bugs away from it and keep you know,
Speaker 1: ideally temperature is controlled too, so if there's no bugs
Speaker 1: to eat it, if the light is away from it,
Speaker 1: you know, feathers will stay good and stay the same
Speaker 1: color kind of indefinitely.
Speaker 3: Ooh, I've illegally picked up feathers from the ground.
Speaker 1: I have some sitting in my living room now, and I'm.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, I found a Cooper Talk striped one in
Speaker 3: my backyard.
Speaker 1: Super cool. No, I was just between you and me,
Speaker 1: and nobody's gonna No one's gonna yeah, I hope not.
Speaker 3: I know I've mentioned it publicly.
Speaker 1: Let me see, this is so funny.
Speaker 3: Someone left to someone left a question about pot and
Speaker 3: caffeine and procrastination, and I was like what and I
Speaker 3: realized that they put it on. I was like, pot
Speaker 3: and caffeine. I don't think birds are doing that. Let
Speaker 3: me see a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Now, the birds do get drunk. Sometimes birds get drunk. Yeah,
Speaker 1: who don't get drunk? No, with birds? So these. When
Speaker 1: berry bird berries will ferment on trees or fruits, it
Speaker 1: is lord. They'll fall down and birds will eat them,
Speaker 1: and they'll actually get drunk and they'll have a really
Speaker 1: hard time flying. Do you think they do it on purpose?
Speaker 1: Probably not?
Speaker 3: Okay, my god, Lena fe first time question asker wants
Speaker 3: to know when doing stuff like mating dances, how much
Speaker 3: fine motor control do birds have over their feathers, Like
Speaker 3: can they move clusters or does it just look like
Speaker 3: it because of all the booty shaking.
Speaker 1: That's a good questions. So birds do have actually pretty
Speaker 1: fine control over their feathers, not really over individual feathers,
Speaker 1: but they can control what are called feather tracks. So
Speaker 1: feathers don't continuously cover a bird's body. I mean, you
Speaker 1: know they do when they're all spread out, but the
Speaker 1: way feathers are grown in specific regions of a bird's body,
Speaker 1: and so they'll be like these, just like she said,
Speaker 1: kind of clusters of feathers that they can control together
Speaker 1: so they can move them around. Oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Erica wants to know are the colored craft feathers real
Speaker 3: feathers and what birds do they come from?
Speaker 1: How do they collect them? Can I die feathers. All
Speaker 1: these questions from Erica. Okay, they are real feathers. Okay,
Speaker 1: almost certainly they're chicken feathers. Oh so they come from
Speaker 1: some farm. I don't know exactly how they harvest them,
Speaker 1: but almost certainly they're all white feathers when they start.
Speaker 1: So they are dyed feathers. And you should be able
Speaker 1: to die a feather with just most dyes. Oh okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and you can blow drive them. Once they're wet, they'll
Speaker 1: have their normal form. I have a feeling you've done
Speaker 1: this before. Yes, I have.
Speaker 3: Kendall wants to know, or rather a comment. My chickens
Speaker 3: are so grumpy when they grow new feathers or when
Speaker 3: they're in pin feather stage as tweens.
Speaker 1: Does it hurt? Why are they so grumpy? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we don't know a lot exactly about animal pain. I
Speaker 1: can imagine it's pretty uncomfortable, but think about like how
Speaker 1: many resources they're putting into growing all of these new feathers. Ay,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's probably making them tired. B it's
Speaker 1: probably not that comfortable because they've got, you know, all
Speaker 1: of these little feather shafts kind of growing out of them,
Speaker 1: and the feathers aren't doing what they normally would in
Speaker 1: terms of like being helping them do therm regulation, protecting
Speaker 1: them from water, from all these things, and so I
Speaker 1: would probably be grumpy if I was a bird.
Speaker 3: Why do some birds lose their feathers or pluck them
Speaker 3: if they're stressed out?
Speaker 1: Yeah, most often seen in parrots in captivity, kind of
Speaker 1: like a neurotic behavior. Now as humans will do weird
Speaker 1: things themselves when they have that, and so plucking feathers
Speaker 1: is something that the birds can do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking about you know when you get up
Speaker 3: really close to a makeup mirror and then you're like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I went over there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you start like going for it and
Speaker 1: it's like too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, Miranda Panda, great name. First time question asker
Speaker 3: wants to know which bird has the longest feather recorded.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so I'm recorded as far as so in
Speaker 1: terms of any feather. There are breeds of chicken where
Speaker 1: they have actually you know, bred them to have these
Speaker 1: incredibly long tails. So I I don't remember exactly along those,
Speaker 1: I want to say something like five feet long. There's
Speaker 1: actually if you come to the bird display at the
Speaker 1: La Natural History Museum. We actually have an example of
Speaker 1: that in our bird diversity hall. There's like this case
Speaker 1: of like prize winning birds, and so we have a
Speaker 1: chicken with a really long tail. Can I take a
Speaker 1: picture of it? Yes? Yes? Okay?
Speaker 3: Side note, after this interview, we went to the bird
Speaker 3: hall and I saw this rooster with maybe an eight
Speaker 3: foot tail, and of course I took a picture. And
Speaker 3: also some of these long tailed fowl can sport a
Speaker 3: party in the back up to fourteen meters or forty
Speaker 3: five to fifty feet long, and their breeders have to
Speaker 3: roost them in these special sleeping arm wars so they
Speaker 3: don't tangle up at night because they grow like a
Speaker 3: meter or so a year. Can you imagine stepping on
Speaker 3: your own feather tail? I don't even want to think
Speaker 3: about bird Dodo in a thirty five foot long feather train.
Speaker 3: Speaking of crappy, what's the crappiest thing about feathers? What's
Speaker 3: the most annoying thing about your job?
Speaker 1: Ooh? The permits? Really? Yes? What kind of permits do
Speaker 1: you need? So to work with birds, we need both
Speaker 1: state and federal permits. You know, you think about museums
Speaker 1: as going around and just getting whatever they want. But
Speaker 1: that's not true at all. You know, we work really
Speaker 1: hard to determine, you know, what's the minimum number of
Speaker 1: samples that we would need for something, and then we
Speaker 1: have to apply to state fish and wildlife agencies and
Speaker 1: get permission to collect or salvage birds you know, find
Speaker 1: them on the ground, and also do the federal agencies.
Speaker 1: So and importing an export. You know, anytime you want
Speaker 1: to like ship things to another country, there's forms to
Speaker 1: fill out, get things, there's forms to fill. So there's
Speaker 1: just you know, paperwork because like the least fun part.
Speaker 3: What about the coolest thing about feathers? Like what's the
Speaker 3: neatest like what just like gets you up in the morning.
Speaker 1: I just think, you know, thinking about the fact that
Speaker 1: my job is to understand why birds are the color
Speaker 1: that they are. I mean, how cool is that? Right?
Speaker 1: I just think about colorful birds? Why are birds this
Speaker 1: incredible rainbow of you know, iridescent colors, browns, blacks. We
Speaker 1: just described a new type of plumage called super black plumage,
Speaker 1: which is like where the way the barbules are shaped
Speaker 1: will actually collect more light than just regular feathers.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: The barbules. Instead of just being flat, they're actually thicker
Speaker 1: and pointed at about a forty degree angle, and that
Speaker 1: that angle actually captures more light than just Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is really velvety. It's so pretty Okay.
Speaker 3: Side note, if you've ever seen the once blackest human
Speaker 3: made material, dubbed Vanta black, it looks kind of like
Speaker 3: you're staring.
Speaker 1: Into a black hole.
Speaker 3: It's just a void of shape or color. Vanta black
Speaker 3: achieves that hardcore space gothness because these carbon nanotubes capture
Speaker 3: the light up to ninety nine point six five percent
Speaker 3: of it. But last year some MIT researchers accidentally made
Speaker 3: something darker. It's ninety nine point nine nine five percent
Speaker 3: light absorbing. Now what about this verb feathers? Same thing
Speaker 3: pretty much so their structure zoomed in through a scanning
Speaker 3: electron microscope looks like a hair brush that kind of
Speaker 3: nabs light, and researchers a few years ago found that
Speaker 3: these super black bird feathers, we're up to ninety nine
Speaker 3: point nine five percent a light, almost as much as
Speaker 3: Banta black.
Speaker 1: But the coolest part is those birds were like.
Speaker 3: Oh congrats, lab nerds, guess what I made almost manta
Speaker 3: black just by hopping around and eating fruit poop it
Speaker 3: kick me off?
Speaker 1: How about it?
Speaker 3: Do you have to stop people and say hold on,
Speaker 3: I just look at the spurred like when.
Speaker 1: You're out for a walk. Oh yeah, yeah, of course
Speaker 1: all the time. But as well, we'll tell you she's like
Speaker 1: the worst going working with because it's like always stopping
Speaker 1: all the time.
Speaker 3: Do you tell people you're a pluminologist plumologist?
Speaker 1: I usually say I'm an ornithologist, but I'm a plumologist
Speaker 1: in my heart. Yes.
Speaker 3: I think the more you use it, the more you
Speaker 3: give permission to other feather experts to use that at
Speaker 3: dinner parties.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for talking. Yeah, it's been really fun,
Speaker 1: my pleasure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so ask smart people stupid questions. And if you
Speaker 3: find a feather, just change your name and hide from
Speaker 3: the Feds in a bunker in the woods if you're
Speaker 3: not already in one.
Speaker 1: I'm right, okay.
Speaker 3: So to learn more about Natural History Museum a Valleycounty,
Speaker 3: you can visit NAHM dot org. I love them, and
Speaker 3: to follow Alison, she is at aj Schultz six point
Speaker 3: twenty two on Twitter and her website is Alisonshultz dot
Speaker 3: com and I will link those in the show notes.
Speaker 3: More links to videos we talked about, and references from
Speaker 3: each episode and discount codes to the sponsors and to
Speaker 3: the charity are always up at aliward dot com on
Speaker 3: each individual episode page. We are at Ologies on Twitter
Speaker 3: and Instagram. I'm at Aliward with one L on both.
Speaker 1: Please find me be my friend.
Speaker 3: We have a full page of topics of all the
Speaker 3: episodes we've ever done. Just go to Aliward dot com
Speaker 3: Clickologies and you'll see the Ologies by topics, all laid out.
Speaker 3: Send that to friends, say pick a topic. There's going
Speaker 3: to be some weird shitting here. We also have transcripts
Speaker 3: of episodes available. We have bleeped episodes if you want
Speaker 3: to listen with kids. Transcripts were done by Emily White
Speaker 3: and a team of transcribers from the Ologies Transcribers Group.
Speaker 1: Huge thank you to them.
Speaker 3: If you ever need a transcription for anything, email hire
Speaker 3: Emily White at gmail dot com. Former intern and now
Speaker 3: pay employee, Caleb Patton is working on the Bleeped episodes.
Speaker 3: Welcome back, Caleb, Congratulations on graduating, and thank you to
Speaker 3: Aaron Talbert for admitting the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Thank
Speaker 3: you to Shannon Feltis and Bonnie Dutch for managing merch
Speaker 3: which is available at aliwar dot com. Bonnie and Shannon
Speaker 3: side note host the comedy podcast You Are That, which
Speaker 3: is very funny if you want to listen to a
Speaker 3: new comedy podcast. And thank you to assistant editor and
Speaker 3: quarantine Hank Jared Sleeper of the mental health podcast My Good,
Speaker 3: Bad Brain, who also does a weekly live stream with
Speaker 3: our traumatologist, doctor Nicholas Barr. There is a link to
Speaker 3: that in the show notes as well, And of course
Speaker 3: to everyone's favorite Dino and Kitty enthusiast and editor extraordinaire
Speaker 3: Stephen Ray Morris of the Percast and see Jurassic Rite
Speaker 3: podcast for stitching these all together. Each week, Nick Thorburn
Speaker 3: wrote and performed the theme music. Also each week, I tell
Speaker 3: you a secret this week. Okay, the secret is my
Speaker 3: dog Grammy. She looks like a tiny raccoon and she
Speaker 3: has fallen behind on her regular haircuts. She needs to
Speaker 3: get trimmed like every two to three months because she's
Speaker 3: like some kind of poof litle mutt. But because of
Speaker 3: isolating groomors are closed, we're staying in and so she
Speaker 3: was getting a little tankly, so Jared and I decided
Speaker 3: we're just going to di wyat and what resulted It
Speaker 3: is a very patchy lion's cut. But you know what,
Speaker 3: we took a risk. We think she looks even more
Speaker 3: beautiful than ever. We're in lockdown, cut banks, text your crush,
Speaker 3: things will grow back. Take a risk?
Speaker 1: Why not?
Speaker 3: Another secret? A little twofer for you is that I
Speaker 3: saved all her hair and I put it in a
Speaker 3: ziplock back and I'm hoping to have someone's spinyard out
Speaker 3: a bit.
Speaker 1: Is that weird? You can tell me ome.
Speaker 3: Pacadermatology, hobology or no zoology, lithology, new technology, meteorology, old peratology, anthology, zeriology, elinology.
Speaker 3: What are birds?
Speaker 2: We just don't know. Get buggy.
Speaker 1: You can't argue with that.
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