SciShow Tangents - Flightless Birds

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

With American Thanksgiving around the corner, turkey is on everyone’s mind! So this week, we’re taking a closer look at flightless birds of all shapes and sizes! What prevents some birds from using their wings to fly? Did Australians really start a war against emus? Plus, we’ll answer your burning questions about the sex lives of many, many different kinds of birds! Wow!Sources:[Truth or Fail]Inaccessible Island rail:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1055790318301763?via%3Dihubhttps://gizmodo.com/how-a-tiny-flightless-bird-ended-up-on-an-island-in-the-1830188012Ostrich egg globes:https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130821-ostrich-globe-map-discovery-science-nation/Emu War:https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/running-ponies/the-great-emu-war-in-which-some-large-flightless-birds-unwittingly-foiled-the-australian-army/  [Fact Off]Crested penguins:https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-02/s-ppi021016.phphttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-016-2060-zhttps://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-06/uod-ppc062816.phphttps://www.nature.com/articles/srep28785Ratite reproduction:https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1469-7998.2011.00858.xhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/80394/10-facts-about-cassowarieshttp://blogs.discovermagazine.com/discoblog/2011/12/08/finally-the-ostrich-penis-provides-the-answer-to-a-long-standing-question/#.W6FsOZNKhxwhttps://www.merckvetmanual.com/exotic-and-laboratory-animals/ratites/reproduction-of-ratites[Ask the Science Couch]Kākāpō:https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2018/03/22/happy-hatchday-21-years-of-conservation-success-for-the-kakapo/https://phys.org/news/2015-11-rimu-berry-game-changer-kakapo.htmlhttps://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/060401_kakapo[Butt One More Thing]Ostrich urine & feces:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643303000060

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen. Today we are joined by our regular group of four friends. We'll start with Stefan Chin. How you doing? Good. What have you been working on? Oh, you know, I'm working on a little music in my free time.

Oh, that's nice. I'm playing a lot of Fortnite, though. What's your tagline? Cheeseburger dreams. And Sam Schultz is also here. Hi. Artist. Mm-hmm.

Mind magician. Oh, am I? What are you working on? I think I drew the best thing I ever is also here. Hi. Artist. Mind magician. Oh, am I? What are you working on? I think I drew the best thing I ever drew this week. Ooh. As a background to the new kids episode. Because I produce, I show kids. And sometimes you need like special backgrounds and stuff.

So I drew a good one today. Can I get it as a tattoo? It's a big forest. So no, I don't think so. It would take up your whole torso. I don't know. I got a whole torso. take up your whole torso i don't know i got a whole i got a whole torso you have a whole torso what's your tagline um this is a long one but today i listened to the same smashing pumpkin song about literally a hundred times sary riley

hello over on the science couch who has reported feeling grumpy i know i ran to the podcast studio and was like just so everybody knows feeling grumpy so it's gonna be hard to make me laugh let's have fun guys what have you been working on writing an infusion that you started to write about the flint water crisis oh that probably would make you feel grumpy no it's like a good script it's just one more thing i'm sorry that i'm making you write about the flint. No, it's like a good script. It's just one more thing on top of everything else. I'm sorry that I'm making you write about the Flint water crisis. No, it's interesting, though.

It is. It's like sad, but it's interesting. It's the greatest crime of our generation. Right? It's pretty tragic. And what's your tagline?

Uh-oh, lost my skeleton. Whoa! I'm Hank Green. I've been working on panicking about my book coming out. Very soon. Very soon, though it will be out by the time this podcast comes out. By a wide margin. What are you working on?

That's what I'm working on. Panicking. Panicking? Just panic. And my tagline today is peanut brittle. Ooh, that sounds great. Those are good. I love it. So, if you don't know, never been here for SciShow Tangents. Every week on Tangents, we get together and try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other

with science facts. Now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem. This time, Stefan is presenting our topic. This is a haiku entitled Kiwi's Lament. Oh, no.

This dumb, smooth breastbone. I guess I'm stuck in this home. Why, evolution? Short and sweet. Short and sweet. Is the home its body? No. No.

Its home is like the ground. He's stuck with the ground. Well, in this case, because it's a Kiwi, New Zealand, nothing wrong with New Zealand, really, but flightless bird can't migrate anywhere else. It can't go, because all the birds get to go everywhere. Yeah. Back before people could go anywhere, birds were like, I've been to all the places. Water ain't shit.

I've been all around this world. What? Water ain't shit to a bird. They can just fly right over it. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I can't swim over a've been all around this world. What? Water ain't shit to a bird. They can just fly right over it. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I can't swim over a water. Well, not that far, as far as they can fly.

Yeah, not as far as they can fly. Water ain't shit to a bird. I think that's your tagline. Yeah, so our topic this week on SciShow Tangents is flightless birds. And that kiwi is stuck in New Zealand, but it's also stuck on the ground. And there are a number of different kinds of flightless birds. And that kiwi is stuck in New Zealand, but it's also stuck on the ground. And there are a number of different kinds of flightless birds. One that I didn't think of at all while I was doing my research until the very end is penguins, which are flightless birds, but you don't really think of them.

Oh, that's all I thought of. Oh, okay. Penguins is number one. Penguins is number one. So what's the difference between a flightless bird and a dinosaur? Sari, go. I don't know. I think they have wings.

Yeah. Teeth. No teeth. But some dinosaurs didn't have teeth. Yeah. I think it's reptiles versus avians. Right. There's a thing there.

It's complicated how we discuss lineage. It turns out that all the circles we try to draw are just fuzzy edged. There's some pretty terrifying birds. I think most birds are kind of scary. Once you get close enough to them, you don't think so? No. They're aggressive. Like geese. Pigeons are cute, that's true.

Between a tiny pigeon and something with giant legs and seven inch talons. What about a hawk though? They're scary. A hawk is more scary. Would you want to get pigeoned? I would rather get pigeoned. I've been pigeoned. It's not that big of a deal.

I feel like you could say to the pigeon, cut that out. And it would be like, oh, okay. Yikes. I understand human language. They might. I live in the city. I'm basically a person. But flightless birds, there's sort of a little bit of a fuzzy line with some birds that can sort of jump and flap.

Like big turkeys can kind of do that, and turkeys can kind of fly. Peacocks can kind of fly, but they're not great at it. So there's a little bit of a— Chickens can kind of fly, right? So this was a thing that surprised me, and this is from the Wikipedia about flightless birds. But it was saying that only domestic chickens are considered flightless. Oh. And same thing for ducks. So we've bred them to be so heavy that

they can't fly. They're just like, I am made of meat. And so there's no way I can do anything but just like jump a little higher than I otherwise could. That makes sense. Yeah. I would expect for a wild, whatever the ancestor of the chicken was, would be a flyer.

Because you've got to be able to get up in that tree if you're a pheasant of some kind, whatever they were. Do flightless birds have teeth? No, no birds have teeth. Except for egg teeth, which they grow for a little bit. Egg teeth? And they get used to tick out of their eggs. Sometimes birds are born with like one or two teeth that they use to break the egg on the way out. Oh, okay.

I think I've heard about that. And you can also genetically alter a bird. They still have the genes to make teeth, and you can turn those genes on, and then they grow teeth, and it is terrible. Yeah, there's like a dude who's really into researching dinosaurs

and the connections between dinosaurs and birds, and he was like, let's make a chicken into a dinosaur, and did that. He was like, there, it's done. I made a third teeth poking out of its beak. It's great. Everyone's happy now.

Jurassic Park is here. Give me $65 a piece to see my terrifying chicken. Can you really pay $65 to see it? That's really cheap. Jurassic Park would be way more expensive than that, I think. Yeah, I've always wondered how much Jurassic Park would be. I think a lot. I think a lot. So've always wondered how much Jurassic Park would be. I think a lot. I think a lot.

Yeah. So like everybody who gets eaten at Jurassic Park is basically just the bougie rich. And the people who work there. Well, people who work there probably are just people who are working at their jobs. Yeah, you don't want them to get eaten. But you can eat the rich, but not the poor workers.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll keep that in mind. So we're going to start off our podcast with me. It's Truth or Fail. So Truth or Fail is our segment in which one of our panelists, this week it's me, has prepared three science facts for everybody's education and enjoyment. But only one of those facts is real. The other panelists have to figure out either by deduction or wild guesses which is the true fact. So I've got three flightless bird facts.

And we've all done a bunch of flightless bird research. So I'm really worried that you guys have encountered these facts before. There's only so many of them. I feel like after this, I got really, like I had a bunch of time for some reason. I didn't have the time, but I got into it. And so I spent a lot of time researching flightless birds. So I feel like there's nothing I don't know about them anymore. We're going to start with our first fact.

The smallest flightless bird in the world is the rail, is a rail, which is a kind of galanule, and it would fit in the palm of your hand. And it only lives on one island in the entire world, and the name of that island is literally Inaccessible Island. Cool. And so the bird, this tiniest flightless bird, it's called the Inaccessible Island Rail. Oh. That's the name of the bird. Or number two, the ostrich and the rhea and emu have all very big eggs. And those eggs are super useful because they're big, they're durable, and they're round.

And they make themselves and you don't have to manufacture them. This led to them being used widely in some industries. And for decades in the mid-1800s, ostrich eggs were cut in half. And then the rounder two parts were stuck together to make small globes. And ostrich egg globes became a fashionable item for wealthy people in Europe. Or emu are notoriously pesky crop eaters. They're native to Australia. And farmers in Western Australia actually called in the Australian army to protect their crops from emus. The Australian army brought machine guns out to the farms and

were on their way to making emu completely extinct when a conservation movement started up to stop the so-called emu war. Hmm. Okay. One of those three is true? One of those three is true. Are they not all true? One of them

is subtly untrue, I believe. There's truth in them all, as there usually is, so that we have things to talk about. The Emu War sounds the fakest to me, but I also feel like I heard about the Emu War. I mean, I've read the Emu War Wikipedia. It's real, but they did a bad job. They didn't kill all the Emu.

That's what I'm thinking is the fake part. They gave up. Yeah, I guess I don't know if your description of the emu war is correct. It was accurate. But there was a war with emu. Yes, we went to war with emu. Of some kind. There was some kind of emu war.

I'm pretty sure I've heard about there being an emu war, even though it sounds the fakest. It does sound really fake. Well, that globe ostrich egg thing also sounds pretty fake, but I also feel like in my research I read about globes made of ostrich eggs and how they were really sturdy and decorative

and an exclusive object, which makes sense because people went on their safaris or explored animal species, ate a bunch of stuff. Probably had some ostrich egg omelets. So I think that one, here's my take on that one, the ostrich egg one. There's something that they used ostrich eggs for, but I don't feel like that's it.

There was a more practical thing that ostrich eggs were used for by industry. And the first one, I feel like you would know if that one's real or not, Sari. I know. So on SciShow, we did a video about endemic species, which are things that live in one very particular place. And I think we did one about a flightless bird that lived on an island, but I don't remember what it was called. An inaccessible island sounds like the most fake name ever. I feel like that sounds like a real name. Yeah, it sounds like a real name to me, like translated from something else.

But like they would name the island and then we'd be like, translated, that means inaccessible island. Oh, I feel like it would be left over from like colonial days and they just wouldn't have changed it. And then eventually it was too fun to change. I also don't know how small it is, whether it's like... Palm of your hand. Palm of your hand.

Well, you said palm of your hand, but like kiwis are like, probably like nestle in your elbow. They're not teeny? I wouldn't say that a kiwi could fit in the palm of your hand. Palm of your hand. Well, you said palm of your hand, but like Kiwis are like probably like nestle in your elbow. They're not teeny? I wouldn't say that a Kiwi could fit in the palm of your hand. It could stand on the palm of your hand, maybe. I'm going to make you guys answer the question. Oh, okay.

So is it the inaccessible island rail? Is it the plentiful ostrich egg globes? Or is it the emu war that almost drove the emu to extinction? I'm going with the inaccessible island one. I also think it's the island. I'm going to go with ostrich globes. Ostrich globes. It's the inaccessible island rail.

Oh, no! The inaccessible island rail only lives on inaccessible island, which is about as far as you can get from anywhere. It is part of an archipelago, and one of the islands is inhabited in the archipelago, but an accessible island is not. So an accessible island is basically, if you draw a line between South America and Africa, like Southern South America and Southern Africa, in the very middle is where an accessible island is.

And these little birds basically have the, called inaccessible island rails, have like are in the ecological niche of like a mouse. So they eat little bugs and they hang out in the grass and they look really cute. They look like a tiny kiwi. They have that thing that flightless birds have where their feathers don't knit together, but they look more like sort of fuzzy fur, and it's just for keeping them warm and protecting them from stuff rather than for flying. And they're cuties.

And they are doing just fine on the one island where they live, but if anything was introduced, they would go extinct immediately. Yeah. So if there was a mouse introduced, a snake introduced, any like rats, like they would just. They're tasty little guys. Yeah. And also like they're not as good as a mouse at exploiting their niche. Right. So a mouse would just be like, oh, I will eat all the bugs.

And you will. And your babies probably too. Are they constantly vigilant to keep mice from getting. People, yeah. People have become pretty vigilant about like keeping an accessible island a nature preserve and the people who like the natively lived nearby still go to it and the place where they come from does have mice um so they go there to like harvest timber and they like always have it's part of their like traditional. But they have tried to make it more careful.

And also there was at one time people started to do agriculture on the island and they shut that down. They were like, no, it's just a nature preserve now. But chances are something will eventually go wrong. The oldest known globe that has a piece of the new world on it was on an ostrich egg. That was not a common way to do globes, though. And that was in the 1500s. In the 1850s, globes were made of plaster or wood if they were small. He just carved them.

But yes, there's a beautiful, very old globe that shows a little piece of what they had discovered so far in the New World. So the Emu Wars were totally a thing where they tried and they brought machine guns to people's farms and they completely failed at killing Emu. They were just terrible at it. And Emu are fast. They change directions very quickly. They're very sturdy. So they could get shot several times and survive.

And there are lots of emu in Australia. They're successful and good at being emu. They killed like 100 I think. The first time they brought the machine gun out they killed like 20 and they were like, because they just split into two groups and they were trying to herd them together and the emu were like, no man, come at me bro.

And emu are very hard to kill. Well, I was right. I should get a bonus one. Why do you get a bonus one? Because I was right about the emu wars. And you gave me such a look like, oh, I wouldn't lie about that. Is that what the look was? I think the look was, oh, shoot. You know.

As soon as Sarah was like, we did a whole show on endemic island species, I was like, I just have a bad memory. Yeah, she picked the wrong one. As soon as Sari was like, we did a whole slash show on endemic island species, I was like. I just have a bad memory. Yeah, she picked the wrong one. Yeah. And now, let's take a quick break to hear from our sponsor. And we're back. Let's take a look at the scores.

I have one point. Sam, you have one point. Uh-huh. Stefan, you have two points. Yahoo! Sarah, you got nothing. Boo. All right, everybody.

Now it's time to get ready for Fact Off. Two panelists have brought science facts to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds. The presentees each have a hank buck to award the fact that they like the most. The person who goes first is the person who most recently ate a bird.

Probably. You didn't eat any food today, so it's not you. True. Well, did you eat bird today? Uh, yeah. Oh. I ate a chicken, orange chicken stir fry that not you. True. Well, did you eat bird today? Yeah. Oh. I ate a chicken, orange chicken stir fry that I made. Chicken, orange chicken? Yep.

So it's time for you to tell us your facts, Sam Schultz. Okay. Global warming is bad for everything on Earth, but crested penguins, which is the name of the family of penguins that have the fun yellow eyebrows, they get it worse than a lot of other species for one weird reason, their inability to make compromises about how they raise their children. So most penguins, all penguins basically,

take turns guarding the nest and hunting when their chicks hatch. And they take turns and they switch on and off throughout the chick's life. But crested penguins only switch jobs once. So their kids hatch. And for the first three to four weeks as they're growing up,

the male penguin guards the nest and doesn't eat any food, and the female penguin goes off and hunts and brings the food back. But then once they're old enough, the female penguins take over after three to four weeks, and they guard the nest.

And for the six weeks after that, the males go out into the ocean, and they hunt. But since they were fasting so much, they have to make up their body weight. But also since the breeding grounds of the things that they eat, like they haven't had good breeding years lately because of global warming, they can usually only eat enough to feed themselves. So they can't bring enough food back for their babies. So their babies are malnourished now and much smaller than they used to be.

Oh, no. The end. That wasn't so much mind blowing as just here, learn about underweight penguin chicks. Sorry. Penguins are kind of sad right now. I read that there are like 60% less penguins than there were in 1979 or something like that. That doesn't surprise me at all. It's not just global warming.

They eat fish and so do we, particularly me. I don't know that I eat the same fish as penguins, but also nowadays we have fish farm operations that grow carnivorous fish like salmon and stuff. And so they have to catch the fish that they feed to the fish farm. So it's not like they stop catching fish. They go and like catch sardines, which are like prime penguin food to feed to. To upgrade to fancy food for us. But are sardines doing all right? No, they're starting to take a hit. Like, you know, they're doing okay.

They rebound faster because they're smaller than big predator fish, but they are starting to be fewer of them, especially like, and like, you know, we very much compete with penguins for food. That's sad because they will lose. They're so small and we have boats and they don't have boats. I'm going to go on a tangent. There was some explorer people. I'm not going to have super specific knowledge on this one because this was a while ago that I found this out.

They were like setting up their fishing expeditions and they're like on these new islands, you know, men of the sea. And they wanted to like have fire sometimes because they were cold. But there was nothing to burn on the island. But they found, they figured out that penguins have such high body fat that they burn. You could just light them on fire.

Did they eat them at all or were they just like, this is firewood? 100% for warmth. Fire penguins. There's a big stack of penguins they were throwing on the fire. Yeah, just go and throw another one on. Yeah. Do they love people?

I think they learn pretty fast. Okay, good. Does anybody have any other questions for Sam? Why only the species? Is it just the way that they swap off? It's just the way that that particular, yeah, that particular kind, just the eyebrow ones, switch off only once. So should they be able to switch, like, if they could switch off more often, would it be helpful? Then they would be fine. Yeah, if they could switch off more often, would it be helpful? Then they would be fine.

Yeah, if they could switch off more often, they could be fine. But scientists haven't found like any evidence that they have figured that out yet. So scientists should go and like say, hey, I know that you think this is your responsibility right now. But sometimes you have to take a break and look out for number one. Who is number one penguin? You are, Steve. But then his baby would be all alone and get eaten. They'll be like, we'll watch your kid.

We're here. You hop in the ocean. I'm going to lay right down on this egg. I would be a penguin daycare specialist. That's a good tag line for next week. Sam Schultz, penguin daycare specialist. I want this for me now. Sari, it is your turn for the

fact off. Okay. Most birds don't have penises except ducks and ratites, which is an infraclass that includes the ostrich, emu, cassowary. And the cassowary is the one that I want to talk about because they have two particularly weird things. So according to one study with one ostrich and three emu dissections,

so I'm guessing that it applies to cassowaries too, they get erections, not because of blood, like mammals, but because of lymph, which is a colorless fluid containing white blood cells, and it has this whole separate system called the lymphatic system in your blood. I know, I geared this for Hank. Maybe it sucks from now on. And so, from what I can tell, ratites with penises still operate on like penis plus cloaca logistics.

You stick one in the other, fertilization happens. Like the penis helps with fertilization and sperm channeling. But with cassowaries, which are these birds that are big and heavy and have a big crest on the top of their head, people are afraid of getting like kicked and killed by them. They have pseudopenises on males and females that isn't connected to reproductive organs and they just like cloacal kiss, but they still like stick them inside each other. Oh, it got better. What a dumb fact.

I felt like I read a lot about flightless birds and I did not come out with any knowledge of lymph penises. Yeah. So some of the penises do do things in rat tights? Yes. As far as I can tell, ostrich emu penises do things. They deliver sperm. They have something called a phallic sulcus, which is a groove in the penis.

I don't think there's a channel in the penis. I looked at so many pictures of ostrich penises for this show. If anybody out there is an emu farmer, let us know what your emu's penises look like. Yes, please, because I can only tell so much from Google image searches and papers. So what I

can tell is that the sperm still comes out of the cloaca, but it runs down a channel in the penis a Hot Wheels track yeah so it's like let's get up in that cloaca and right runs off inside but in the cassowary it's just a fleshy yeah in the cassowary it's like a fleshy thing. In the cassowary, it's like a fleshy thing. And the female has one too that's about the same size. But most of the year it's inverted. So it becomes like a pseudo-vagina.

What the hell? And so they both have this weird fleshy bit organ. And so when they mate, to my understanding, also didn't see a picture of this, but the male pseudo-penis goes into the female pseudo-vagina and then just, like, do the sex thing.

And then the kiss happens. And then the kiss happens there. Sari wins, obviously. Oh. Come on. Sari wins my Hank buck. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to step on stuff.

Yeah, sorry. That's the best sex. That's fine. It's not just the best fact. It's also the best sex, apparently. Okay, it's time for Ask the Science Couch, where we ask listener questions to our couch of finely honed scientific minds. And I think Stefan has our question for us. Sarai Creations, I hope I'm saying that correctly, or at Tiamat Sarai, asks,

Tell the world about the kakapo, the world's only nocturnal flightless parrot. Not a question. I think it's also the world's only flightless parrot. Yeah, I think so, too. It just happens to also be nocturnal. So tell us about the kakapo. Mostly what I know about the kakapo is that it's rare, it's going extinct, and it had sex with David Attenborough's cameraman. Oh, that was that thing.

That's like pretty much all you need to know. I've seen that thing. Where do they live? New Zealand, I think. They're endemic to New Zealand. Yeah. Which means that they just like are confined to that location because they're flightless and can't go anywhere. So they're on this island. That's pretty much the basics.

Was it David Attenborough's cameraman or was it Stephen Fry's cameraman? They meet with a lot of non- cockapos because they're not the brightest little birds. And also there's not a lot of cockapos left so I gotta do it with something. Our producer has

told us to clarify that this was not like... They didn't have sex with each other. He was just trying to capture the moment and the kakapo decided that its head was a good place to latch on to. Yeah, they like flutter up around heads. One of the researchers tried to make a helmet to capture semen from the kakapos. So this is common enough. Yes.

They didn't like the helmet, so they never tried to mate with people's heads when they were wearing it. I don't know why they try and mate with people, but basically they're very bad at it and not really set up for it. They're the only parrot to practice what's known as the lek mating system,

which is where males court the females with like song and dance and make it a big show. And so during the breeding season, they walk up to four miles away and then dig a bowl in the ground and like make it look all pretty. But because they're flightless, it's very hard to find male cockapos when they're all like screaming into the forest i think they have deep booming

yeah they go like yeah that can travel as far as three miles and they boom like tens of times throughout the mating season and the females are wandering around like where are they sometimes they find little holes in the ground that were dug out previously and and they're like, okay, waiting for a male. This is a good hole. I like it. But then there's no bird there. Oh, no. It's an old hole. Yeah, it's an old hole.

So they're bad at breeding, and they have trouble finding each other because they're so few and because their breeding system is not really set up for the way that they travel. Also, the females are only fertile and only want to really breed when a fruit called the rimu fruit is in season. They're fruit dependent. They're fruit dependent. And one study says that they think it's because this fruit is really saturated in vitamin D, which is an essential nutrient for both egg laying and for development of the baby birds. an essential nutrient for both egg laying and for development of the baby birds. And so it's like, we got to make sure we're stocked up on this fruit before I feel ready to bring babies into the world for some reason.

So something's going on biochemically and biologically with that. And yeah, so they'll only mate in a high fruit year. So if it's not high fruit, they just don't mate at all. Yeah. Which is not good. And then when they do mate, they only lay one or two eggs come on y'all replacing exactly what's there and they initially had no natural predators and so they're just like very gentle creatures if they're scared they'll just freeze and sit there and like try and blend in with the environment it sounds very precious but

also very sad. Sometimes they'll be like climbing up in trees and if they get scared, they'll jump out even though they can't really fly. And they'll just kind of like parachute flutter down to the ground in like a scared, sad little way. Oh, and because they have no defense mechanisms, because they just like freeze or flutter around and make a bunch of noise when invasive species started being brought in by mostly Western settlers like stoats, which are a kind of weasel and rats and cats. They just got eaten because they're these, even though they're like chunky birds, eight pounds, I think is the number that I read.

They're just going to sit there and get eaten. Yeah, that's good. That's good food for a stoat. So, yeah, the numbers went down to like 50 or 30 individuals, which is so, so few. And now there's a really concentrated effort from humans to try and rebreed. I think they're up to 149, according to an article from March of this year. All right. That's not bad.

Slowly going up. Not that many birds. No. We have 149 of the stupidest parrots. Yeah, that we're just really trying to save, even though they've like, I guess it was partially our fault that they were driven to extinction. But also. Well, that's how I felt about

the inaccessible island rail. It's like, it's doing fine at the moment, but like if a breeding pair of mice got to that island in any way, they would go extinct. So probably it would have happened eventually. But it will happen to

everyone eventually. Someday the planet will be consumed by the sun. Yeah, you're right. What's the point then? And with that, let's look at the final scores. I still have one. Sam, you still have one. Sam, you still have one. Stefan, you still have two.

But Sari, come back to tie Stefan with two points. A penis fact is always going to win the day. It's not fair. It's a penis and a vagina fact. It's a penis and a vagina fact. All in one. It's cheating, basically. Animal sex.

If you want to ask the Science Couch, you can tweet your questions using the hashtag Ask SciShow. Thank you to Garrett, Lali, Lader, and Murray Kitson, and everybody else who tweeted us your questions this week. And remember, if you like this show, and if you want to help us out, it's really easy to do that. First, you can leave us a review on iTunes. That is very helpful and helps us know what you like about the show. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. Finally, like about the show. Second, you can tweet out your favorite moment from this episode. Finally, you could just tell people about us. Thank you for joining

us this week. I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangent is a co-production with WNYC Studios. It's produced by all of us and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our music is by Joseph Tunamedish. Our art is by Hiroko Matsushima.

Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno. And we couldn't make any of this without our patrons on Patreon. Thanks again. And remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. Ostriches are the only bird that poop and pee separately. Do they pee down the hot wheels track? Ha ha ha.