Hippo's Wild World of Animals - Random Animal Facts

Years ago I had a job doing breeding bird surveys, which involves going out and listening to bird songs at dawn to determine which species were in an area announcing their horniness. In my part of the world during the summer, dawn is more like 3 am which is a truly ungodly hour to have to start work. So I did some research into why exactly these stupid birds all have to start singing at dawn.

The short answer is there doesn't really seem to be one specific reason for it.

At dawn the weather conditions are usually at their calmest. The day's heat has not yet stirred up wind, and any night-time storms or rain that developed as the temperatures dropped when the sun went down have usually disipated or stopped. So there's usually less environmental impediment to being heard. Also, the sun has not yet woken up the insects and it's still a little too dark to be hunting around for seeds (songbirds usually have pretty sucky night vision, being all about colour-vision cones), while there is enough light for females to see your brilliant plumage and mating displays.

Since the birds just woke up, it's also a good time to remind all the other birds that you are in your territory, and it is an awesome territory (the other main function of bird songs). So it becomes a morning tradition, get up, brush your beak, comb your feathers and announce that you are horny and your territory is the best, then you can get on with your day of eating bugs and trying not to get killed.

Personally, I think they do it just to fuck with birdwatchers. Dawn also coincides with the activity cycle of that most annoying of all crepuscular species, the mosquito, so birdwatchers tend to be connoisseurs of the most potent varieties of DEET-infused repellents. The low angle of the sun also allows birds to situate themselves directly between the sun and the birdwatcher, making binoculars a risky proposition and giving rise to one of the most spotted dawn bird varieties - the Silhouette Warbler. The Silhouette Warbler has a call that sounds almost like a Canada warbler. Or maybe it's a Townsend's. Or a Magnolia. No, maybe it sounds more like a Connecticut warbler. I just need a look at its plumage... AAAAGGGHHH!!! MY EYES!!

Be represented as greedy jerks.

Yes!

Geese are assholes. I'd eat goose more often if it wasn't so expensive, just to do my part in ridding the world of geese.

Whoa, do they actually have spikes on their tongue? It is kind of crazy how much that serration in their beak looks like teeth.

Oh my.... no, of course not!

We had a goose for a while, and it hated me, but only me, even though I never so much as said a nasty word to the mean shit. It got so bad that if I went outside, that asshole would start waddling towards me from wherever on the property it was, just to try to bite me on the leg.  I tried to take a nap in a lawn chair, and I had to keep a broomstick with me to defend myself from it.  I think we finally sold it. I was quite happy to see it go.
They do make really effective watch-critters, I will give them that.

Swans are indeed bastards, and being even bigger than their goosely kin, they are potentially quite dangerous when riled. In fact, more people are killed each year by swans than by sharks. Admittedly, this is more a testament to how few people are actually killed by sharks, but still. It should also be noted that almost all of these fatalities (as well as a good number of "lesser" injuries like broken arms) are amongst farm kids, who have an amazingly high fatality rate all around. It's almost like raising kids in what amounts to an industrial work site isn't really all that safe.

Unlike most birds, swans have an unusually rich fossil history. Pleistocene era swan fossils are common across Europe and North America. They seem to have a habit of getting themselves preserved in bogs.

Unfortunately, their fossil history is also remarkably dull. They have pretty much been swans since the late Miocene (about 10 million years ago). The only real mystery is exactly when the southern hemisphere black swans split off from the northern mute swan.

The island of Malta does have some mildly interesting swan palaeontology. It was home to both a dwarf island species, as well as a gigantic, probably flightless swan. It was taller (but not heavier) than the dwarf elephant that also inhabited the island.

Shark Week? I could do that during actual shark week so I guess I might, depends how things go for the schedule.

And thank you, trickster god cub.

Probably but not up close and looking to bite him. I also assume Lord Lucan was looking for the same thing as you.

aha! and I just learned that ✧ʕ̢̣̣̣̣̩̩̩̩·͡˔·ོɁ̡̣̣̣̣̩̩̩̩✧ isn't Canadian! I will yet unravel the mysteries of ✧ʕ̢̣̣̣̣̩̩̩̩·͡˔·ོɁ̡̣̣̣̣̩̩̩̩✧! 

That'd just be sitting around in water baths eating lettuce though.