r/Awwducational • u/IdyllicSafeguard • Aug 28 '24
Verified The speckled mousebird hangs belly to belly with others in its flock to keep warm while sleeping. After a meal — of toxic plants, clay, dirt, and peddles — a mousebird may hang upside down, exposing the black skin of its belly to the sun in order to warm up and aid digestion.
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u/IdyllicSafeguard Aug 28 '24
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u/irishspice Aug 29 '24
This is absolutely fascinating. I've never heard of a mouse bird before and they are really delightfully weird. You've got a really great website so many interesting animals thanks for sharing them with us.
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u/IdyllicSafeguard Aug 29 '24
Thanks so much for reading (:
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u/Helpful_Okra5953 Sep 13 '24
Yes, thank you! I just saved your website and added the speckled mousebird to my weirdest bird list.
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u/thissexypoptart Aug 28 '24
peddles
Peddles?
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u/EpilepticMushrooms Aug 28 '24
Pebbles, probs. Might be for digestion, like Crocs eating stones or chickens eating grit.
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u/IdyllicSafeguard Aug 28 '24
This bird's diet is...unique. Its favourite food is fruit, both ripe and unripe. It also eats other parts of plants including the leaves, buds, seeds, and nectar. Several of the plants that it eats are toxic — to neutralise their effects, it has to ingest clay and dirt.
Every day, it must eat about its entire body weight in these low-calorie, high-fibre (potentially toxic) foods. To aid in digestion, it hangs with its belly facing the sun, warming it up, and swallows peddles that grind down the dubious foods.
The speckled mousebird isn't a graceful flier, but it can scamper amidst branches like a mouse through the grass.
This mousebird has different alarm calls for different dangers; emitting a “shriek” if the danger is on the ground or a loud “pit” if the danger comes from the sky.
It hides from predators by staying motionless among the branches of a bush or tree, but if that fails, the mousebird drops to the ground and scurries away.
Flocks of 7 to 8 mousebirds (and sometimes more than 20) live together all year round, even during their breeding season, when most other birds become too temperamental for flock-living. They communicate with constant contact calls (“chew-chew”).
To keep warm at night they sleep belly to belly, or, in large flocks, in tight balls of bodies. In extreme circumstances, a mousebird can go into torpor, reducing its metabolisms by up to 90% to conserve energy.
The mousebirds make up an entire bird order, the Coliiformes. They were once more abundant in the early Paleogene and Miocene (~65 to 23 million years ago), but now only 6 species, including the speckled, remain.
You can see more about the speckled mousebird's odd diet and friendly flocks, as well as other mousebird species and rare bird orders on my website here!