Animals, features and articles | Educational Science

Apr 26, 2021

Cuckoo bird has crossed the Sahara 10 times in 5 years

A cuckoo bird named PJ just broke an impressive record: He traveled more than 50,000 miles (80,000 kilometers) in the past five years while migrating to and from the U.K. Common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) spend their winters in Africa and migrate to the U.K. in the spring to breed, typically...

May 4, 2021

This Muppet-faced frogmouth is the 'most Instagrammable bird' on Earth

The sky is full of exceptional birds. Cardinals bedecked with half-male, half-female plumage; godwits that can soar 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) across oceans nonstop; parrots that can best Harvard undergrads in a classic con game (no student loans required). Then, there are birds whose only claim to fame is their...

May 14, 2021

Condors won't stop visiting (and trashing) this California woman's house. Here's why.

Over the weekend ~15 California condors descended on my moms house and absolutely trashed her deck. They still haven’t left. It sucks but also this is unheard of, there’s only 160 of these birds flying free in the state and a flock of them decided to start a war with...

Jun 14, 2021

Crows understand the 'concept of zero' (despite their bird brains)

Crows may be bird-brains, but the feathered creatures can understand the highly abstract concept of zero, new research suggests. The concept of zero, as used in a number system, fully developed in human society around the fifth century A.D., or potentially a few centuries earlier, Live Science previously reported. For...

Jun 17, 2021

World's first bionic vulture created

A wild vulture recently had surgery in Vienna to implant a bionic leg. While still a nestling, Mia suffered a major injury to her right leg. Her parents had used sheep wool to hold the nest together, and some of the fibers became tangled around the young vulture's ankle. With...

Jun 29, 2021

This french-fry-stealing seagull is the star of a new Google ad

An astonishing photograph captures the instant a seagull in the United Kingdom gaped its beak to snap up a french fry. The sight of a gull trying to nab human food is all too familiar to beachgoers, but hungry gulls usually move too quickly for people to catch them in...

Jul 8, 2021

Mass bird die-off in eastern US baffles scientists

Hundreds of young starlings, blue jays, grackles and other birds in the eastern U.S. are dying from a mysterious illness. It has the makings of an avian epidemic, but to fight it, scientists first have to find the cause. So far, scientists have ruled out some of the most common...

Jul 22, 2021

'Trash parrots' in Australia have figured out how to open garbage cans (Video)

Wild sulphur-crested cockatoos Down Under have learned how to open residential garbage-can lids and loot the leftovers, a new study finds. And apparently, the birds are learning this trick from one another. One bird in a far-flung neighborhood even invented another lid-opening technique, which quickly spread to cockatoos in nearby...

Aug 4, 2021

Sneaky birds caught on video while yanking hair from live animals

Parents will do almost anything for their young. Bird parents are no exception, and many go to great lengths to build the perfect nest for their chicks. Many birds take this duty to a new level by plucking hair off of living animals in order to fill their nests, an...

Aug 22, 2021

These flesh-eating centipedes hunt and eat baby birds alive. Here's why.

Giant, carnivorous centipedes on a South Pacific island can kill and eat up to 3,700 seabird chicks every year, a new study has revealed. Phillip Island centipedes (Cormocephalus coynei) are ferocious beasties, growing up to nearly 1 foot (30 centimeters) long, clad in armored plates along their segments and equipped...

Aug 23, 2021

Tortoise hunts baby bird in slow-motion, crushes its skull in shocking video

In shocking new video footage, a giant tortoise creeps toward a baby bird perched on a log, slowly and steadily cornering the chick before chomping down on its tiny skull. The footage ends after the lifeless bird tumbles to the ground, but the researcher who captured the video reported that...

Sep 7, 2021

This Australian bird's cry sounds just like a human baby

The wails coming from an enclosure at Taronga Zoo Sydney in Australia may sound like the cries of a human baby. But don't be alarmed. It's just a trickster resident: A brown, long-tailed bird named Echo has learned how to mimic the shrieks and shrills of human babies. Taronga Zoo...

Sep 17, 2021

Bizarre tail on little dinosaur-age bird was literally a drag

A dinosaur-age bird's extravagant tail feathers may have helped it win over mates, but the fluffy rump was also literally a drag during flight, a study of a well-preserved fossil finds. The bird's tail is truly bizarre, the researchers said; it had two lengthy plume feathers that were more than...

Oct 26, 2021

Parasitic birds 'exercise' in their eggs, hatch … and then pulverize their nestmates

Newly hatched birds might seem like delicate, feeble creatures, but some chicks burst out of their eggshells ready to brawl. These little fighters exercise in their eggs before hatching to build up the strength needed to maim and murder their nestmates, a new study suggests. The baby birds are part...

Oct 29, 2021

Critically endangered condor chicks are species' 1st known 'virgin births'

Scientists have reported the first known virgin births in California condors — two chicks that hatched without any males involved in fertilizing the eggs. Researchers recently made the unexpected discovery that the genomes of these two birds contained no DNA from any condor males, according to a genetic database that...