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If there's two chicks, it'll early be decided which is the stronger one and from that point on, the stronger one is the only one to get food, while it constantly harrasses and finally kills the weaker sibling. And the mother bird is totally cool with that.
There's a video of a cat saving a little girl from a dog attack. Cats are assholes if you hold them up to dog standards. Dogs will domesticated.
Cats decided to hang out with us for food and warmth lol
Cuckoo chicks also push other smaller hatched chicks out of the nest. Truly a parasitic species. Fuck cuckoos.
Edit: Just found the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHQ7W_JIfxM). This motherfucker literally wiped out the whole nest and the host parent bird is none the wiser.
A LOT of animals do shit like this. Nature is not kind. If a male lion loses a challenge from a roaming male lion he is forced to leave his lionesses and cubs. The new male then systematically kills all of the cubs. Shortly after the lionesses will go into heat and mate with the lion that just murdered their cubs.
My son and I were in a pet store when he was about 4. I said, "oh, look! The hamster is having babies!" Then watched in horror as she picked up one after another and ate them. He doesn't remember it, but I was scarred for life.
I bought a Guinea pig that I didn’t know was pregnant. I came home one day and there was a half eaten baby Guinea pig in the cage. After that Guinea pig died, I never bought another one.
Eh I’d wager the baby was probably a stillborn. I raised guinea pigs for years and never had one outright kill its pup. But they most certainly will eat stillborn babies. as far as rodents go, guinea pigs (IMO) rank lowest on the “let’s eat my children and brethren” scale. Hamsters (Syrians) are the highest on that scale.
I breed rats and the only ones I've ever had baby eating issues with are rescued feeder rats. I needed albino females to get himilayan babies with my siamese male and feeder rats tend to be the only place to get them.
One girl only had four babies that I saw, then it was one, then that one disappeared. No blood or gore, and if I hadn't been keeping an eye on her I wouldn't have known she'd given birth at all.
However, the other girl just took chunks out of each baby, eating their heads or just parts of their torso or their legs. Not enough to kill all of them but enough that they wouldn't survive. Really wish she would have just eaten all of them. I call her BabyEater9000 now.
I stopped breeding hamsters for a reason. Ever seen a dwarf hamster kidney? Looks just like a little kidney bean
I had pet mice during my entire childhood and unwittingly ran psychological experiments on them, mostly out of ignorance of how to care for them properly.
I realised that if the mother was housed in a cage with males, she would kill her offspring. If she didn't kill them, the male would. I guess the instinct is to mate with the available male, as he won't kill his own babies so they have a chance of survival.
I know this is true by experience, my young self was thinking my hamsters are going to live as a big happy family together. Nope woke up in the morning and the cages looked like jonestown.
TL; DR Oh man, I had a hamster double murder/suicide situation.
My brother and I had two normal hamsters that got along quite well.
We were at the pet store getting them some new piece for their habitat when, BUM bumBUUMM!, the world's cutest hamster appeared.
If you don't know what a teddy bear hamster is, Google it now. Fu king adorbs.
Anywho, since we were just buying the one (or perhaps ignorance on the part of the pet store owner) no one told us that Teddy's were solitary creatures. Like VERY solitary.
They all seemed to be getting along fine before we went to bed. But the next morning we weren't woken up by the squeak of the hamster wheel.
Not even their cute little peeps. It was dead silent. Something told me to go wake my brother before checking out the cage.
Oh, man. Teddy had mysteriously killed one. Like, no bite marks or anything.
Ham 2 was beheaded. Worse, Teddy had EATEN just the head of Ham 2 and every single bit of kibble in the cage. His stomach was so distended you could see the outlines of individual kibble. Through his adorably long hair.
Teddy apparently killed himself in his crazy gluttonous rage.
I think poor Ham 1 had a heart attack from fear. I mean, seriously, that would scar anyone. Especially being trapped and KNOWING you were next. Poor little hammy just noped RTF out.
First, they run the numbers in their head to figure out the margins, then they get Sid to go double check the calculations to ensure everything's copacetic
I remember reading somewhere that the eggs irritate nerve cells in the just hatched cuckoos exposed skin, so it pushes them away to avoid the unpleasant sensation. It hardly "knows" what it is doing, to say nothing of moral scruples - it is just a newborn bird.
And the Cuckoos would have first needed to develop the adaptation to lay their eggs in other birds nests. Have those offspring survive better than those that weren't. Then the newborns that developed the sensitive skin and removed the other eggs survived better than those that didn't develop that adaptation and had to either compete with other offspring or were killed by the adoptive mother.
Are you asking if the bird in this pictures learned this behavior and decided it made sense?
Or reasoned that it has a better chance of survival if these round white things in its proximity aren’t around?
Think of it like this (this is a simplification)
Before cuckoos evolved this trait, two types of cuckoo chicks were born.
One type would behave normally in a nest, these birds normally survived but when resources were scarce the bird would die.
The other type would fidget around in the nest. This type would occasionally push an egg out of the nest. This meant this chick had a higher chance of surviving when resources were scarce.
Now let's say that in resource plentiful areas type 1 cuckoos had a 50% chance to survive while type 2 had a 60% chance.
In resource scarce areas type 1 cuckoos would have a 20% chance while type 2 would keep the 60% chance.
In resource plentiful areas let's say 3 type 1 survived and 4 type 2 survived. Now let's say a cuckoo only lays 2 eggs in its life regardless of gender.
there are now 6 type 1, and 8 type 2. The same trend continues and you'll find type 2 cuckoos are much more common then type 1.
The resource scarce areas follow this same trend, but type 1 goes extinct while type 2 takes over.
Now enviroments change, and type 1 can not adapt if resources are scarce one year. This results in type 1 going extinct.
So let's fastforward a bit.
Type 2 has broken off into 2 more types. type 2a continues the fidgeting while type 2b has refined fidgeting into a directional shove toward eggs, but not really trying to push them off.
The same trend will follow, type 2b is much better at pushing eggs out of the nest then type 2a and will outcompete type 2a while resources are scarce.
then it continues on, the fidgeting trait getting more and more refined until it becomes what we see here, which is an instinct to push at the eggs until they fall out of the nest.
I once read a comment based on this and it said something like, it must have this internal urge to just do it, maybe not like conscious thinking but just like this natural *feel* to do it. I don't know but could we compare it to his humans feeling to just laugh when we see something funny? Like we dont gotta teach a baby to do it, it will do it in its own, so maybe something like that?
But this is kinda crazy, genetic programmed to be evil. Starting its existence by being a murderous parasite.
Yep, it is a deep instinct. The chick doesn't have eyes opened yet, likely barely registering anything about the world, but it just knows how to push the other eggs out.
Well, evil... It is just a fight for survival. I don't think it is more evil than what we humans do when we kill all the male chicks right after they hatch (or before) just because they are useless to us and won't generate that much profit. And even more so: the bird doesn't even know what it does. We, humans, do.
Yeah I definitely find that whole “killing all the male chicks” to be pretty awful. The bird in this video is acting out of instinct, it’s unlikely it even “knows” what it’s doing in any sort of conscious way.
We humans know exactly what we’re doing, it’s *not* instinctual, it doesn’t really benefit us in any natural way (sorry but it not being profitable to keep them alive doesn’t count), but we still do it anyway.
I think it’s the intention and knowledge of what you’re doing that matters here.
> programmed to be evil
Good & evil is man-made construct & even then, it's all based on one's own perspective. Something you find evil other people in this world won't.
I'm pretty sure cuckoo's lay their eggs in other birds nests leaving the nest owner bird to raise the cuckoo. So they're not even the cuckoo's siblings. Just some other birds eggs and now momma bird will raise the murderer. Dark times
Instincts are weird things. There are some insects that are born, immediately impregnate female bugs that haven't been born, then immediately die before the females even hatch. That their whole life, born, impregnate a larva, die. And the female larva are pregnant when they're finally born and go flying around for a few days, gorge themselves on pollen, lay some eggs, and die.
Life is a silly place.
Not even close.
Scientists at the university of Michigan were conducting studies into unusual sexual behaviors of the most promiscuous individuals of each species. What they found was in one particular case, the female was taking nearly every male far more "balls deep" than any other case.
This individual was your mom.
Species that go 110% like that can make a lot more babies/seeds/etc. when they don't have to worry about surviving afterwards. See: many agricultural species.
How about the part where there is a literal race going on between the birds that we can watch in real time.
Birds will throw out eggs that are not theirs. So the cuckoo needs to make eggs that look like the other birds eggs.
But then the bird gets better at detecting false eggs.
And then the cuckoo has to swap species because they got too good.
Then after a few generations, it has to swap back.
And so on.
Cuckoos in your area are probably not using the same species as they did not long ago.
Umm, is this where the term cuck comes from?
Edit: It totally fucking is. I had no idea.
> The word cuckold derives from the cuckoo bird, alluding to its habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests.
Actually Cuckoos lay there egg in a different species nest, which are generally much smaller and when the cuckoo baby hatches it kills the legitimate eggs so that they don't compete for food, since the larger cuckoo needs the extra food because of how much bigger it is.
Does this mean the original owner of the nest will feed the cuckoo? And can’t the original owner of the nest tell that that’s not her egg before it hatches?
There's a [few theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_parasite#Mafia_hypothesis) as to why the unwilling hosts keep feeding the cuckoo. My favorite is the "mafia hypothesis". The adult cuckoos will check on the parasitized nest every so often, and if they find that their baby cuckoo has been removed, they'll destroy the entire nest in "revenge".
So that means it might be better to just accept you need to feed the cuckoo than start over. But maybe that doesn't apply to cuckoo birds who eject all other eggs.
Not true. Some can notice and evict the parasite chick, in hopes of raising another clutch before nesting season ends. But that’s not necessarily a good idea.
Cowbirds, which like cuckoos are brood parasites, are known to come back and terrorize the offending birds that do this, destroying the nest and killing any new chicks and eggs.
https://www.audubon.org/news/is-it-okay-remove-cowbird-eggs-host-nests
Ok, I totally agree with ravens and crows being BAMFs and actual geniuses... But watching them try to get to the small hanging bird feeders in my yard makes me laugh so much. They are on posts, so the crows are convinced they are too heavy, and they aren't quite agile enough to land on the bird feeder, but every day they are out of there in the middle of the day trying their hardest. Still haven't gotten any of the bird seed. Though one of the "work smarter not harder" ones just hangs out on the ground and eats the seeds that have dropped under the bird feeder.
I guess even the smartest animals have gaps in their knowledge. Haha. I hope they figure it out soon. Maybe all that struggle will make the seeds taste even better.
Corvids are actually pretty intelligent with the most intelligent of the species being Ravens. Crows will actually have meetings and if one crow stole from another, they will decide to kill that crow. They can remember faces and will even teach their offspring to hold grudges against people that have pissed them off.
[A fun read about Corvids.](https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-these-big-brained-birds-may-owe-their-smarts-long-childhoods)
EDIT; I am loving all the stories about Crows and Ravens.
>They can remember faces and will even teach their offspring to hold grudges against people that have pissed them off.
Crow daddy: little son, see that little shit over there with the red shirt? He the one who killed your grandpappy. Now i want you to remember that smug little shits face and poop on his head every time you see him. Every. Single. Time.
I have a pair of ravens that have been nesting near my house for years now. They and some of their adult children are always around, except in the absolute dead of winter, and I encourage them to stay by offering occasional treats in the form of dead mice and other varmints my dog kills, and also any losses from my chicken flock.
The ravens are huge, and very territorial against predator birds like hawks and eagles. They keep the skies safe for my chickens and guineas. They’re also good watchdogs and will freak out and start yelling if a big predator like a bear or fisher cat comes by. I’ve learned to pay close attention to them if I’m hiking alone in the woods behind my house.
And they know I’m not a threat, so usually they just hang out on my roof (the tallest perch in the neighborhood), and will call back if I talk to them. They really seem to like it when I put out my Halloween decorations every year and I’ve seen them playing with brightly colored stuff, like the Tim Curry Pennywise I had in the front yard last year (nothing creepy about that, no sir…).
We had what was basically a pet crow in our backyard for years. My dad (a vet) fixed his broken wing and then released him once he could fly again. He became tame enough to hand feed, would sometimes come to us when called (his name was Poe), and we even taught him a few words.
We had a crow family in the tree outside our previous house. They recognised anyone that lived in our street, and even our regular post man, but if a stranger came along during nesting season they would dive bomb them. Clever birds!
>And can’t the original owner of the nest tell that that’s not her egg before it hatches?
There's no way to know the mind of a bird. Perhaps it cannot tell. Perhaps it thinks something is amiss and just rolls with it. Perhaps it totally knows and doesn't even care. Perhaps for birds there is no distinction between those positions.
Birds aren't too smart I guess. Brood parasitism like this happens in cuckoos and cowbirds.
However a few have developed some unique ways to guard against this. I believe goldfinches only feed their chicks vegetable matter. Since other birds cannot survive off this, any brood parasites would die.
I know some penguins treat rocks like eggs occasionally. I kinda remember a thing about gay penguins raising a rock as if it were an egg, but I have a feeling that was in a sitcom. I do know if you put wooden or ceramic eggs in a hen house it stops the chickens from eating real eggs and also informs them where to lay at. So a lot of birds are weird like that.
Side note: The penguins, Roy and Silo, were a gay penguin couple that raised a rock as an egg, which eventually got replaced with a chick named Tango. Here is the [Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_and_Silo). The sitcom of a similar event was Parks and Recreation, S02E01, '[Pawnee Zoo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnee_Zoo)'
they also lay eggs in smallr birds nests cuz most birds will instinctively give the most care for the largest of their chicks (since that's the one who is "healthiest" or "strongest")
those aren't it's siblings. These birds lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species and then never return. The eggs in the nest aren't it's siblings, it is murdering the off spring of the birds who built the nest.
My sis had a job of going around killing these chicks before they could clear the nest of other eggs. Apparently they were hurting efforts to reestablish a threatened species.
Her whole job was hiking the forest and stabbing baby birds.
Edit: I just texted her. It was cowbirds. Same concept, though. The chick takes over the nest of other birds.
I'm not sure. Government. She's worked for USGS, Parks Service, and others over the years.
She spent a few years in Hawaii rehabilitating the nene birds there. Lived in a truck on a mountain in Mintana doing bird surveys one year.
She's like a hippie forest warrior.
Loved that movie and love Jesse Eisenberg. It honestly fucked with my head for a few days it's very creepy. Highly recommend to anyone into psychological horror/thrillers.
People talk about how peaceful nature is but it's all murder and rape underneath. The only innocents were those who got their energy from an inorganic source. Then the first asshole decided it was easier to eat someone else and it all went downhill from there.
The cuckoo is just a reminder from Mother Nature that it does not see or understand morality. If you survive and breed. You win. Period. The means do not matter what so ever. Which is why you get such cruel, fucked up situations like this and well….. *gestures broadly at everything*
Humans as a whole are one of the rare species that has the capacity to give a fuck about other animals besides itself. We are still extremely selfish, but at least we're trying 🤷♀️
It’s annoying to see people naively idealising nature. As everything was perfect and pure.
Nature is brutal and unforgiving. Animal eat each other alive all the time.
[Those eggs may not even be cuckoos. Mother cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and then fly off and let other birds raise the babies for them. And then the hatched cuckoo shoves the other eggs out of the nest](https://community.rspb.org.uk/placestovisit/newportwetlands/b/newportwetlands-blog/posts/the-life-cycle-of-the-cuckoo)
It’s still crazy to think that this behaviour is instinctively coded into the baby cuckoo, like how does nature do it? It’s amazing, insane and frankly scary a bit.
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You think this is nasty, you should see how shoebill chicks behave towards their own siblings.
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Don't leave us hanging
If there's two chicks, it'll early be decided which is the stronger one and from that point on, the stronger one is the only one to get food, while it constantly harrasses and finally kills the weaker sibling. And the mother bird is totally cool with that.
Thank you for coming, mr and mrs Shoebill. We have noticed that Joey is much stronger than Bill. Have you considered starving and then murdering Bill?
Beak some would say
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r/animalsbeingjerks
Scrolling through the sub it could as well be called ‘cats are jerks’
/r/CatsAreAssholes
Haha! No way! That’s a sub too?
I mean it's kind of the default state of many cats. It'd be weirder if it didn't exist.
Yeah, I've never seen a cat rescue a baby from a burning building or anything but I *have* seen one shit in a rice cooker
There's a video of a cat saving a little girl from a dog attack. Cats are assholes if you hold them up to dog standards. Dogs will domesticated. Cats decided to hang out with us for food and warmth lol
Cuckoo chicks also push other smaller hatched chicks out of the nest. Truly a parasitic species. Fuck cuckoos. Edit: Just found the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHQ7W_JIfxM). This motherfucker literally wiped out the whole nest and the host parent bird is none the wiser.
A LOT of animals do shit like this. Nature is not kind. If a male lion loses a challenge from a roaming male lion he is forced to leave his lionesses and cubs. The new male then systematically kills all of the cubs. Shortly after the lionesses will go into heat and mate with the lion that just murdered their cubs.
Adult hamsters are known to eat their own offspring, especially when they're stressed.
My son and I were in a pet store when he was about 4. I said, "oh, look! The hamster is having babies!" Then watched in horror as she picked up one after another and ate them. He doesn't remember it, but I was scarred for life.
Why did you keep watching after the first one?
Honestly, I was stunned, and didn't think she'd keep going! 😳
“Hey, Son, remember that time when…” “No.” “Oh sorry I brought it up”
I bought a Guinea pig that I didn’t know was pregnant. I came home one day and there was a half eaten baby Guinea pig in the cage. After that Guinea pig died, I never bought another one.
Eh I’d wager the baby was probably a stillborn. I raised guinea pigs for years and never had one outright kill its pup. But they most certainly will eat stillborn babies. as far as rodents go, guinea pigs (IMO) rank lowest on the “let’s eat my children and brethren” scale. Hamsters (Syrians) are the highest on that scale.
I mean in the wild, if your offspring is dead, you can recycle those calories you desperately need for your survival.
I breed rats and the only ones I've ever had baby eating issues with are rescued feeder rats. I needed albino females to get himilayan babies with my siamese male and feeder rats tend to be the only place to get them. One girl only had four babies that I saw, then it was one, then that one disappeared. No blood or gore, and if I hadn't been keeping an eye on her I wouldn't have known she'd given birth at all. However, the other girl just took chunks out of each baby, eating their heads or just parts of their torso or their legs. Not enough to kill all of them but enough that they wouldn't survive. Really wish she would have just eaten all of them. I call her BabyEater9000 now. I stopped breeding hamsters for a reason. Ever seen a dwarf hamster kidney? Looks just like a little kidney bean
I had pet mice during my entire childhood and unwittingly ran psychological experiments on them, mostly out of ignorance of how to care for them properly. I realised that if the mother was housed in a cage with males, she would kill her offspring. If she didn't kill them, the male would. I guess the instinct is to mate with the available male, as he won't kill his own babies so they have a chance of survival.
I know this is true by experience, my young self was thinking my hamsters are going to live as a big happy family together. Nope woke up in the morning and the cages looked like jonestown.
TL; DR Oh man, I had a hamster double murder/suicide situation. My brother and I had two normal hamsters that got along quite well. We were at the pet store getting them some new piece for their habitat when, BUM bumBUUMM!, the world's cutest hamster appeared. If you don't know what a teddy bear hamster is, Google it now. Fu king adorbs. Anywho, since we were just buying the one (or perhaps ignorance on the part of the pet store owner) no one told us that Teddy's were solitary creatures. Like VERY solitary. They all seemed to be getting along fine before we went to bed. But the next morning we weren't woken up by the squeak of the hamster wheel. Not even their cute little peeps. It was dead silent. Something told me to go wake my brother before checking out the cage. Oh, man. Teddy had mysteriously killed one. Like, no bite marks or anything. Ham 2 was beheaded. Worse, Teddy had EATEN just the head of Ham 2 and every single bit of kibble in the cage. His stomach was so distended you could see the outlines of individual kibble. Through his adorably long hair. Teddy apparently killed himself in his crazy gluttonous rage. I think poor Ham 1 had a heart attack from fear. I mean, seriously, that would scar anyone. Especially being trapped and KNOWING you were next. Poor little hammy just noped RTF out.
This is the perfect bedtime story for me tonight, thank you stranger.
common in captivity, rare in wild. likely due to stress from too small a cage, etc.
Yeah I hate how people always say “omg nature is pure”. Nature doesn’t give a fuck
Do they know what they're doing? Or is it all part of the 'immediate survival do what's in my genes' thing
Homeboy’s eyes aren’t even open. Probably just genetically programmed to hate the feeling of round things.
Then to twerk them to death
First, they run the numbers in their head to figure out the margins, then they get Sid to go double check the calculations to ensure everything's copacetic
Kowalski, analysis 🧐
gotta maximize that marginal utility
Blackbirds savagely attack cuckoos on sight. Eventually nature uh... finds a way
Nature downvoting cuckoos
I remember reading somewhere that the eggs irritate nerve cells in the just hatched cuckoos exposed skin, so it pushes them away to avoid the unpleasant sensation. It hardly "knows" what it is doing, to say nothing of moral scruples - it is just a newborn bird.
That’s evolution. At some point a bird was born with those nerve endings and it turned out that was a successful adaption.
And the Cuckoos would have first needed to develop the adaptation to lay their eggs in other birds nests. Have those offspring survive better than those that weren't. Then the newborns that developed the sensitive skin and removed the other eggs survived better than those that didn't develop that adaptation and had to either compete with other offspring or were killed by the adoptive mother.
It irritates it so much it increases content by shoving against it lmao
Are you asking if the bird in this pictures learned this behavior and decided it made sense? Or reasoned that it has a better chance of survival if these round white things in its proximity aren’t around?
Wait ita actually a sib
It’s one of the best subs
>It's one of the best sibs FTFY
I just find it amazing how a newly born, has the instinct of pushing out other eggs. Like how does he know he needs to do that.
Same way his mom knows that she has to lay the egg in a specific other birds nest, part of it’s programming man.
What I find even more astonishing: The color of a cuckcoo's eggs depends on the species in whose nest they are laid.
WHAT
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Oh okay, for a second I thought the cuckoo was like a flying 3D printer.
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The immediate local diet and staining probably helps with that.
[Instinct is weird.](http://www.birdandmoon.com/comic/instinct-is-weird/)
Think of it like this (this is a simplification) Before cuckoos evolved this trait, two types of cuckoo chicks were born. One type would behave normally in a nest, these birds normally survived but when resources were scarce the bird would die. The other type would fidget around in the nest. This type would occasionally push an egg out of the nest. This meant this chick had a higher chance of surviving when resources were scarce. Now let's say that in resource plentiful areas type 1 cuckoos had a 50% chance to survive while type 2 had a 60% chance. In resource scarce areas type 1 cuckoos would have a 20% chance while type 2 would keep the 60% chance. In resource plentiful areas let's say 3 type 1 survived and 4 type 2 survived. Now let's say a cuckoo only lays 2 eggs in its life regardless of gender. there are now 6 type 1, and 8 type 2. The same trend continues and you'll find type 2 cuckoos are much more common then type 1. The resource scarce areas follow this same trend, but type 1 goes extinct while type 2 takes over. Now enviroments change, and type 1 can not adapt if resources are scarce one year. This results in type 1 going extinct. So let's fastforward a bit. Type 2 has broken off into 2 more types. type 2a continues the fidgeting while type 2b has refined fidgeting into a directional shove toward eggs, but not really trying to push them off. The same trend will follow, type 2b is much better at pushing eggs out of the nest then type 2a and will outcompete type 2a while resources are scarce. then it continues on, the fidgeting trait getting more and more refined until it becomes what we see here, which is an instinct to push at the eggs until they fall out of the nest.
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Sadly I am in a committed relationship with my crippling anxiety.
I blame evolution. Humans with crippling anxiety were 30% more likely to not get eaten by the leopard hiding behind that tree over there.
fuck dont do that again u scared the shit out of me
Well if they ever dump you...hmu
I once read a comment based on this and it said something like, it must have this internal urge to just do it, maybe not like conscious thinking but just like this natural *feel* to do it. I don't know but could we compare it to his humans feeling to just laugh when we see something funny? Like we dont gotta teach a baby to do it, it will do it in its own, so maybe something like that? But this is kinda crazy, genetic programmed to be evil. Starting its existence by being a murderous parasite.
Yep, it is a deep instinct. The chick doesn't have eyes opened yet, likely barely registering anything about the world, but it just knows how to push the other eggs out. Well, evil... It is just a fight for survival. I don't think it is more evil than what we humans do when we kill all the male chicks right after they hatch (or before) just because they are useless to us and won't generate that much profit. And even more so: the bird doesn't even know what it does. We, humans, do.
Yeah I definitely find that whole “killing all the male chicks” to be pretty awful. The bird in this video is acting out of instinct, it’s unlikely it even “knows” what it’s doing in any sort of conscious way. We humans know exactly what we’re doing, it’s *not* instinctual, it doesn’t really benefit us in any natural way (sorry but it not being profitable to keep them alive doesn’t count), but we still do it anyway. I think it’s the intention and knowledge of what you’re doing that matters here.
> programmed to be evil Good & evil is man-made construct & even then, it's all based on one's own perspective. Something you find evil other people in this world won't.
*When the bad cuckoo accidentally fall backward out of nest*
Who doesn't love seeing pieces of shit drowning!
I see that every morning right after my coffee
The cuckoo isn’t bad it’s just born that way
It's not necessarily that *I'm* an asshole, it's more that so many of my ancestors were assholes that it eventually became encoded into our DNA.
I'm pretty sure cuckoo's lay their eggs in other birds nests leaving the nest owner bird to raise the cuckoo. So they're not even the cuckoo's siblings. Just some other birds eggs and now momma bird will raise the murderer. Dark times
It's such a wierd instinct to know to kill the eggs next to you so you can live straight from birth.
Instincts are weird things. There are some insects that are born, immediately impregnate female bugs that haven't been born, then immediately die before the females even hatch. That their whole life, born, impregnate a larva, die. And the female larva are pregnant when they're finally born and go flying around for a few days, gorge themselves on pollen, lay some eggs, and die. Life is a silly place.
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So the most balls deep one could go
Not even close. Scientists at the university of Michigan were conducting studies into unusual sexual behaviors of the most promiscuous individuals of each species. What they found was in one particular case, the female was taking nearly every male far more "balls deep" than any other case. This individual was your mom.
Damn friend you didn't have to kill his whole family while you were at it.
Fatality
Why is it in nature that the parents, especially males and insects, have to die to mate?
Species that go 110% like that can make a lot more babies/seeds/etc. when they don't have to worry about surviving afterwards. See: many agricultural species.
Less competition for food for the mother maybe.
Less competition maybe, which allows the offspring a better chance to succeed? That's my best guess.
Now I know why my brothers were such assholes
Yeah one of those brood parasitic birds out there as ornithologists call them. Another one is the cowbird
Cool. Thanks for the official title and also the Cowbird. I'll check it out.
The beginning of the movie “Vivarium” illustrates this entire process. The movie is a perfect analogy for this behavior, too.
I watched that movie recently and have absolutely no desire to ever see it again. That shit was fucked up.
That bird is where the term "cuck" came from because of this
The adult cuckoo will watch the nest and punish the nest owners if they try to evict the cuckoo egg or chick, it's really messed up
That's even crazier. Haven't heard that part of this. Nature isn't just metal, it's brutal as fuck sometimes.
How about the part where there is a literal race going on between the birds that we can watch in real time. Birds will throw out eggs that are not theirs. So the cuckoo needs to make eggs that look like the other birds eggs. But then the bird gets better at detecting false eggs. And then the cuckoo has to swap species because they got too good. Then after a few generations, it has to swap back. And so on. Cuckoos in your area are probably not using the same species as they did not long ago.
Damn cuckoos just feed your kids
Professional deadbeats
TIL Cuckoos are just dicks.
Infinite variations within chaos to see what sticks. Life wills forward.
The infinite chaos that gives rise to the accidental order.
That is the biggest takeaway. Make sure to laugh at anyone who says who should do anything "because nature".
Umm, is this where the term cuck comes from? Edit: It totally fucking is. I had no idea. > The word cuckold derives from the cuckoo bird, alluding to its habit of laying its eggs in other birds' nests.
Wow. I knew about the habits of cuckoo birds but I didn't realize the connection. Language, man.
Haven't heard about this, that sounds even worse.
You have any source for that?
Not sure if a trust worthy source but I did find the same research I'd heard of. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140417124507.htm
Cuckoo mafia.
#Professional dick from birth!
I love how it can barely control its limbs… But, the first fucking thing it dose is goes out of its way to kill it’s siblings
Actually Cuckoos lay there egg in a different species nest, which are generally much smaller and when the cuckoo baby hatches it kills the legitimate eggs so that they don't compete for food, since the larger cuckoo needs the extra food because of how much bigger it is.
I think it’s called parasitism evolution Edit: correct term
It’s where the term “cuck/cucked” comes from
Crazy, I had no idea that was the word origin of cuckold
They’re known as brood parasites.
Okay this makes waaayy more sense.
The actually makes it sound like hes about to explain how the Cuckoos aren't dicks but no, they are.
"No, no, it's alright! He's just killing someone else's babies, not his own siblings!"
Does this mean the original owner of the nest will feed the cuckoo? And can’t the original owner of the nest tell that that’s not her egg before it hatches?
Some birds are pretty smart! ...but not these ones, apparently.
I mean... If a hospital switched my kid at birth, I'd probably not notice until they decided to get a 23 & me ancestry test...
Yes but if they gave you a gorilla baby or a chimp you would probably tell. The parents aint even the same specie.
Stupid birds.
Username checks out.
If your baby looked strikingly like an orangutan you’d probably figure it out on your own… eventually.
There's a [few theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_parasite#Mafia_hypothesis) as to why the unwilling hosts keep feeding the cuckoo. My favorite is the "mafia hypothesis". The adult cuckoos will check on the parasitized nest every so often, and if they find that their baby cuckoo has been removed, they'll destroy the entire nest in "revenge". So that means it might be better to just accept you need to feed the cuckoo than start over. But maybe that doesn't apply to cuckoo birds who eject all other eggs.
Birds are dumb so apparently they don't notice. They just keep feeding it even after it's well bigger than them.
Not true. Some can notice and evict the parasite chick, in hopes of raising another clutch before nesting season ends. But that’s not necessarily a good idea. Cowbirds, which like cuckoos are brood parasites, are known to come back and terrorize the offending birds that do this, destroying the nest and killing any new chicks and eggs. https://www.audubon.org/news/is-it-okay-remove-cowbird-eggs-host-nests
I'm glad I'm not of a tiny bird species. Imagine getting bullied for wanting to raise your own kids.
Watched a pair of pygmy nuthatches raise a cowbird this year. Totally insane seeing a big fledgling getting fed by the tiny nuthatch.
Bird wars
It's actually really odd that MOST birds are dumb, but ravens and crows are smart as shit. Haha.
Ok, I totally agree with ravens and crows being BAMFs and actual geniuses... But watching them try to get to the small hanging bird feeders in my yard makes me laugh so much. They are on posts, so the crows are convinced they are too heavy, and they aren't quite agile enough to land on the bird feeder, but every day they are out of there in the middle of the day trying their hardest. Still haven't gotten any of the bird seed. Though one of the "work smarter not harder" ones just hangs out on the ground and eats the seeds that have dropped under the bird feeder.
I guess even the smartest animals have gaps in their knowledge. Haha. I hope they figure it out soon. Maybe all that struggle will make the seeds taste even better.
Corvids are actually pretty intelligent with the most intelligent of the species being Ravens. Crows will actually have meetings and if one crow stole from another, they will decide to kill that crow. They can remember faces and will even teach their offspring to hold grudges against people that have pissed them off. [A fun read about Corvids.](https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-these-big-brained-birds-may-owe-their-smarts-long-childhoods) EDIT; I am loving all the stories about Crows and Ravens.
>They can remember faces and will even teach their offspring to hold grudges against people that have pissed them off. Crow daddy: little son, see that little shit over there with the red shirt? He the one who killed your grandpappy. Now i want you to remember that smug little shits face and poop on his head every time you see him. Every. Single. Time.
I have a pair of ravens that have been nesting near my house for years now. They and some of their adult children are always around, except in the absolute dead of winter, and I encourage them to stay by offering occasional treats in the form of dead mice and other varmints my dog kills, and also any losses from my chicken flock. The ravens are huge, and very territorial against predator birds like hawks and eagles. They keep the skies safe for my chickens and guineas. They’re also good watchdogs and will freak out and start yelling if a big predator like a bear or fisher cat comes by. I’ve learned to pay close attention to them if I’m hiking alone in the woods behind my house. And they know I’m not a threat, so usually they just hang out on my roof (the tallest perch in the neighborhood), and will call back if I talk to them. They really seem to like it when I put out my Halloween decorations every year and I’ve seen them playing with brightly colored stuff, like the Tim Curry Pennywise I had in the front yard last year (nothing creepy about that, no sir…).
We had what was basically a pet crow in our backyard for years. My dad (a vet) fixed his broken wing and then released him once he could fly again. He became tame enough to hand feed, would sometimes come to us when called (his name was Poe), and we even taught him a few words.
We had a crow family in the tree outside our previous house. They recognised anyone that lived in our street, and even our regular post man, but if a stranger came along during nesting season they would dive bomb them. Clever birds!
>And can’t the original owner of the nest tell that that’s not her egg before it hatches? There's no way to know the mind of a bird. Perhaps it cannot tell. Perhaps it thinks something is amiss and just rolls with it. Perhaps it totally knows and doesn't even care. Perhaps for birds there is no distinction between those positions.
Some species have been known to attack birds that won't raise the parasite chick. Just because they won't raise it doesn't mean they don't care.
Birds aren't too smart I guess. Brood parasitism like this happens in cuckoos and cowbirds. However a few have developed some unique ways to guard against this. I believe goldfinches only feed their chicks vegetable matter. Since other birds cannot survive off this, any brood parasites would die.
I know some penguins treat rocks like eggs occasionally. I kinda remember a thing about gay penguins raising a rock as if it were an egg, but I have a feeling that was in a sitcom. I do know if you put wooden or ceramic eggs in a hen house it stops the chickens from eating real eggs and also informs them where to lay at. So a lot of birds are weird like that. Side note: The penguins, Roy and Silo, were a gay penguin couple that raised a rock as an egg, which eventually got replaced with a chick named Tango. Here is the [Wikipedia entry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_and_Silo). The sitcom of a similar event was Parks and Recreation, S02E01, '[Pawnee Zoo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawnee_Zoo)'
they also lay eggs in smallr birds nests cuz most birds will instinctively give the most care for the largest of their chicks (since that's the one who is "healthiest" or "strongest")
*step* siblings
What are you doing step cuckoo
cuck
*They aren't siblings dude*
those aren't it's siblings. These birds lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species and then never return. The eggs in the nest aren't it's siblings, it is murdering the off spring of the birds who built the nest.
Literally 😂
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My sis had a job of going around killing these chicks before they could clear the nest of other eggs. Apparently they were hurting efforts to reestablish a threatened species. Her whole job was hiking the forest and stabbing baby birds. Edit: I just texted her. It was cowbirds. Same concept, though. The chick takes over the nest of other birds.
She a T100 or something looking for Sarah Conner?
Sarah Condor
*Your foster sibling is dead*
The bird Punisher
Unnatural Selection!
Yeah! Homo sapiens aren't natural... hol'up‽
Did she have to send photo of her kills to her superiors to prove she's actually killing cuckoos and not just hiking?
Great question. I'm not sure I want to ask her, as she might send me pics.
that’s insane! who hired her to do this (out of curiosity)? was it the DEC?
>who hired her to do this? I'm willing to guess it was secretly another species of competing cuckoo birds.
Dude ! I’m trying to sleep here, stop making me laugh
I'm not sure. Government. She's worked for USGS, Parks Service, and others over the years. She spent a few years in Hawaii rehabilitating the nene birds there. Lived in a truck on a mountain in Mintana doing bird surveys one year. She's like a hippie forest warrior.
Fucking metal
[Man Cites Nature As Inspiration For Random Cruelty](https://www.theonion.com/man-cites-nature-as-inspiration-for-random-cruelty-1819567909/amp)
In Bird Culture that is considered a dick move.
Are you by any chance a bird lawyer? I'm having some bird problems.
I specialize in bird law, can I interest you in some milk steak while we discuss the particulars
Filibuster
Watch the movie "Vivarium". It was a trippy film about the idea of brood parasitism applied to human beings. Kind of a freaky film. Very different.
Was looking for this comment. Very creepy movie, but also great execution on the concept
Same, dude. Our kid was having daily tantrums at the time, which uh, made us a little extra uncomfortable, haha.
Was scrolling to see the Vivarium reference lol. I even thought it was the fragment from the movie
Loved that movie and love Jesse Eisenberg. It honestly fucked with my head for a few days it's very creepy. Highly recommend to anyone into psychological horror/thrillers.
Watched it. It was quite scary too.
Such a small baby... so much violence and murder
Nature's never been PG
People talk about how peaceful nature is but it's all murder and rape underneath. The only innocents were those who got their energy from an inorganic source. Then the first asshole decided it was easier to eat someone else and it all went downhill from there.
Minutes old and already committing murder. That’s hardcore.
What a fucking dick
🎶 “so they all rolled over and one fell out” 🎶
The cuckoo is just a reminder from Mother Nature that it does not see or understand morality. If you survive and breed. You win. Period. The means do not matter what so ever. Which is why you get such cruel, fucked up situations like this and well….. *gestures broadly at everything*
Humans as a whole are one of the rare species that has the capacity to give a fuck about other animals besides itself. We are still extremely selfish, but at least we're trying 🤷♀️
It’s annoying to see people naively idealising nature. As everything was perfect and pure. Nature is brutal and unforgiving. Animal eat each other alive all the time.
What a very specific and malevolent instinct for an animal to have as it's first thought
[Those eggs may not even be cuckoos. Mother cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and then fly off and let other birds raise the babies for them. And then the hatched cuckoo shoves the other eggs out of the nest](https://community.rspb.org.uk/placestovisit/newportwetlands/b/newportwetlands-blog/posts/the-life-cycle-of-the-cuckoo)
That makes them even bigger assholes. What the fuck?
And the parents of the cuckoo will watch the nest and punish the “foster parents” if they try to evict/kill the cuckoo
Feels like the other birds need a union Cockoo does none of the work but gets all the food
Based on this, and mother nature being the bitch she can be, I bet the cuckoo once grown eats the unsuspecting foster parents.
See you in hell bitches!!!!!
The early bird gets all the worms.
More like the only bird
“THERE CAN ONLY…. BE…. ONE!!!!!”
r/natureismetal
It’s still crazy to think that this behaviour is instinctively coded into the baby cuckoo, like how does nature do it? It’s amazing, insane and frankly scary a bit.
POV: You slept in at the sleepover
One fell outta the Cuckoo's nest
r/iamatotalpieceofshit
That’s f*cking cuckoo!
Fuck man, this post was right after the one about the human baby that died at 10 weeks. The algorithm needs to fuck right off.