This episode is brought to you by the Music for Scientists album! Stream the album on major music services here: streamlink.to/music-for-scientists. Check out “The Idea” music video here: alfirst.info/load/qIqwhHCZl6yelJc/video.
From birds with no wings to giant fowl that were once mistaken for predators, here are 6 birds that who's strange features may not be what you think of when you think of birds!
Hosted by: Stefan Chin
SciShow has a spinoff podcast! It's called SciShow Tangents. Check it out at www.scishowtangents.org
----------
Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: www.patreon.com/scishow
----------
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever:
Silas Emrys, Charles Copley, Drew Hart, Jeffrey Mckishen, James Knight, Christoph Schwanke, Jacob, Matt Curls, Christopher R Boucher, Eric Jensen, Lehel Kovacs, Adam Brainard, Greg, GrowingViolet, Ash, Laura Sanborn, Sam Lutfi, Piya Shedden, KatieMarie Magnone, Scott Satovsky Jr, charles george, Alex Hackman, Chris Peters, Kevin Bealer
----------
Sources:
bit.ly/3tF3SJ2
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6626525/
academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/63/3/442/1649269
link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10336-009-0399-x#citeas
link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00114-006-0125-y#citeas
www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2020.00367/full
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0167284
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2756958/
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982215009458#:~:text=Birds%20evolved%20from%20theropod%20dinosaurs,in%20one%20burst%20of%20innovation.
www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.33.010802.150517
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14772019.2010.526639
evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-009-0133-4
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pala.12351
bit.ly/3r5IiLV
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018217307149
www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1871174X12000066
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rstb.2018.0248
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24563098/
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1475-4983.2012.01195.x
advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/49/eabb6095?fbclid=IwAR2PKR3u2nZ0s4kOU-QZH9mZTHB8-YMZ6gmvGAVTV8mBkGjYpSdXEYccSTA
www.researchgate.net/publication/6730231_Palaeontology_Skull_morphology_of_giant_terror_birds
pubs.geoscienceworld.org/jgs/article-abstract/155/1/1/93849/A-new-giant-ground-bird-from-the-Upper-Cretaceous?redirectedFrom=fulltext
www.pnas.org/content/111/29/10624.full
bioone.org/journals/journal-of-vertebrate-paleontology/volume-30/issue-5/02724634.2010.501465/Osteology-of-a-New-Giant-Bony-Toothed-Bird-from-the/10.1080/02724634.2010.501465.full
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1906724/
www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-75248-6
epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/12011/1/zitteliana_2008_b28_09.pdf
Image Sources:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Xiaotingia_by_Qilong.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Twelfth_Archaeopteryx_specimen.jpg
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/55/Velociraptor_Restoration.png/1280px-Velociraptor_Restoration.png
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microraptor_Restoration.png
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeholornis_mmartyniuk_wiki.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jeholornis-Paleozoological_Museum_of_China.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Archaeopteryx-modern_bird_tails.png
commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86414955
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0184637
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gobipteryx_sp_eggs.JPG
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hesperornis_BW.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hesperornis_regalis_(1).jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Animals_of_the_past_-_an_account_of_some_of_the_creatures_of_the_ancient_world_(1929)_(18012757429).jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gastornis.png
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gastornis_geiselensis.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phorusrhacid_skeleton.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aepyornis_maximus.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pelagornis_chilensis_1.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pelagornis_mauretanicus.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pelagornis_miocaenus.jpg
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pterosaur_(Zhengzhou).jpg
These Extinct Birds Really Stretch the Definition of “Bird”
2 055 Shikime 208 mijë
This episode is brought to you by the Music for Scientists album! Stream the album on major music services here: streamlink.to/music-for-scientists. Check out “The Idea” music video here: alfirst.info/load/qIqwhHCZl6yelJc/video.
How about music BY scientists ?
The largest flying bird is an Albatros? What about Condors?
Are phytoplanktons and zooplanktons closely related to each-other, as per their family trees? Make a video on this topic.
8
Wow great video
No mention of the internal structure of the bones themselves, nor layout of their respiratory system. These are important features of birds today, but how important was it back then?
They were birds we have goat ox antelope we have apes humans and monkeys we have eels bony fish sharks
"What ARE birds? We just don't know."
No one gets it right, but he correct pronounciation of "Archaeopterix" should be "Arch-AE-o-TER-ix" (not Arch-ae-OP-ter-ix), as this name is derived from two Greek words, "archaios" and "pteryx" ("ancient wing").
Opposite bird like a cat
Birds are reptiles. You're introducing old concepts like new news and with old information.
The host looks like he should have GIlbert Gottfried's voice
"Four-winged Micro-Raptor" Whelp, I just found my spirit animal! (Emphasis on the "spirit")
Well now I’m just more afraid of geese than I was previously. 😅
That is the appropriate response to geese. They're just plain evil.
alfirst.info/load/bXaRcW3LiKqcoXU/video
The Dino/ad ratio is getting ridiculous
Do not fear. Live or die, have FAITH in Jesus Christ! Thank you.
But was Christ a dinosaur or a primitive bird??
??????
Bird is but a word
Where do Pterodactyls fall in the group you’ve been talking about??
@Craton Orogen Oh. Okay. Thanks. I haven't been in school for decades, now. I probably just forgot, lol !!!
Nowhere because pterodactyls weren’t dinosaurs, just flying reptiles. They didn’t share recent common ancestors with dinosaurs and consequently with birds.
Call them Dribs
This was a enlightening episode. Thank you!
That's the most plucked archaeopteryx I've ever seen in an illustration..no wonder he looks a bit pissed, or maybe he's just dancing, trying to stay warm...you know, because of the whole "plucking" situation. Cheers :)
All I heard while watching this video, is that bird is the word.
I never understand archeopteryx bring considered as a bird. If you put then together based in diagnostix features like wings or based that they are closer to birds than to non-avian dinosaurs why not includ velociraptor or other miniraptorian. I Remember that in cladistics a new species is included in a natural group that they are within. If archeopteryx is a sister taxa to all the extant bird that would make a new group. If that's not true why not includ all the pseudo suchians as crocodiles ir all the mammaliforms as mammals?
Us troglodytes would enjoy these posts more if you gave the feet/pound equivalent so we don't have to stop the video to calculate on our fingers and toes. Thats too much mental gymnastics at 3:00 am. Eons doesn't make me do that.
I find it funny noticing that every major animal group (maybe being a little too vague) has had a time where it defined the period. And the versions that stuck around were often not why they originally evolved nor the most common type. I feel non-human mammals might be most likely to live on in the water. Whales and dolphins are extremely good at being underwater predators. Breaking records for the largest ever.
SciShow: So. You think you know what a bird is... *Me, looking at my parrot* : Yes
Ah yes, my convoluted lineage.
I've forgotten the Latin name, but New Scientist had an article years ago about one they dubbed the "Demon Duck of Doom". I think it was about 2.5 metres high and weighed about 300 kg, or something like that.
@slwrabbits That's the trouble, I can't remember such details about the article. So you might be right.
I thought that was Gastornis?
Why have I never seen the microraptor before that thing is so cool.
how y'all managed to talk about diving flightless birds and think to compare them to ducks instead of penguins is beyond me
I love this guys ears keep up the good content
velociraptor of jurassic world doesnt have bird like features is that a joke?
Are phytoplanktons and zooplanktons closely related to each-other, as per their family trees? Make a video on this topic.
No. Plancton is not a Taxonomic group of animals It is more like a way of life in the ocean. They includ all microscopic live beings that live fluctuating and carried by the tides. Phytoplancton are those who are photosyntetic and zooplancton i think a manly composed by animals, this includ even crustaceans larvae.
When I was a kid I said a T-Rex was a bird, and the whole class laughed at me. NOW who's laughing BI-ATCH?!
Well tyrannosaurus is not really a bird.... But its closely related to birds tho! Easy to remember it by is like this: "this all birds are dinosaurs but not all dinosaurs are birds!" Stating a chicken is a dinosaurus would be accurate stating a tyrannosaurus is a bird is inaccurate Yeah its confusing when i explain it😂 Sorry!
Hesperonis looks like a really messed up penguin
I know you want to sound scientific but please, please give US measurements as well. I know that I'm not the only one that can't translate to metric as quickly as you talk. It makes your videos less enjoyable to have to struggle through math and miss important info as a result.
I for one am glad birds are no longer the size of pterosaurs
"Birds Aren't Real"
alfirst.info/load/roOrome3l82Do4E/video
Werm Hat? 🪱🎩 Denim Chicken? 👖🐓 Bird with Teeth? 🐦🦷 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Think before you shout.
Many types of fully modern bird fossils have been found with those of dinosaurs including ducks, loons, flamingos, albatross, owls, penguins, sandpipers, parrots, cormorants, avocets, as well as extinct birds such as Archaeopteryx and Hesperornis. Therefore, Archaeopteryx cannot be, "the first bird." The Tooth-billed Hummingbird that exists today has teeth. Meanwhile, the Hoatzin has functional claws on its wings. Though these features are rare, they do exist.
awesome
Hesperornis had to come to land at some point, to lay and hatch eggs. Chicks aren't born with gills...but it would be pretty cool if they were!
For me all theropods are birbs! They are birb-ey, so they are birbs
So... Gastornis was basically a terror bird, but it didn’t eat meat
Good Point
The closest modern analogue to it was probably the cassowary and you know the reason why
When I clicked on this video I thought it was on the PBS Eons channel.
This guy should dress up as Pee Wee Hermam for costume parties and Halloween.
How is this the first I've ever heard of a raptor with four wings.
psshh. this video is for the birds
The line between what is a bird and what isn't is immensly blurry and i'm glad this video is out there to talk about it in a way so eady to understand. The fact that there's still people today who think birds and non avian dinosaurs were two drastically different things is outrageous, not on them, but on the fact that pop culture and saltlords on the internet keep spreading misinformation to keep the idea that dinosaur = monster well alive in people's minds, all for profit or just self validation, and JW: Dominion, with it's immensly half-assed broken wristed, parrot-like giant pyroraptor, and ARK 2 with it's claim of "hyper realistic dinosaurs", are just proof that companies won't stop beating that long fossilized horse as long as people get more accessible "informations" from idiots who still simp the isle rather than from videos like these which actually care about the matter at hand. It's so hard to get into paleontology because of the overwhelming ammount of misinformation out there that's falsly veiled as legit because a lot of people say it, or the person saying it is famous (:cough: tierzoo :cough:), and i'm very thankful for videos like this that bring actual good information in a great format and to a wider audience. :^)
This is the best and certainly the most complete video about birds I have ever come across....and is likely to ever come across in the future.
20-40 KIlograhams. Impressive.
When did it go from 65 to 66 million years ago. Did I miss a million years, am I that old?
"I'm more than a bird. I'm more than a plane. I'm a birdplane. A motherfucking birdplane." _Birdplane_ by Axis of Awesome.
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's SUPERDINO!
Maybe the atmosphere was denser in the time of pterosaurs?
The last bit made me wonder... Bats have the same method of takeoff as pterosaurs had, so what is limiting their size?
Their mammalian bone structures are their only limiting factor (mind that their bones are not hollow like birds nor have air sac in it, only thin) The largest hypothetical bats that can still fly could probably never reached the size of even a medium-sized pterosaurs, unless they become semi-terrestrial or completely flightless
But.. but... how can you mention the pelagornithidae without mentioning the teratornithidae? 🦅
Avian dinosaurs are sill very successful. Mammals are the dominant terrestrial animals but only number about 4,000 species while birds number about 10,000 species. That's more than twice as much.
well its more that birds are dinosaurs... better wording would be avian dinosaur then bird
Imagine if how delicious is their meat making those bird into dish. 😋😋
But did those early birds catch the worm? 🤔
Birds are Not real
“Category “, “species “, etc can’t pen point anything. The Heidelberg uncertainty principle in effect.
Velociraptors are birds. Change my mind
They had hands on their wings? Okay so they're dragons.
after the inevitable extinction of whales who's gonna take their ecological niche? well i put my money on penguins. 30 meter long 100 metric tons filter feeding penguins. let's find out in the next 50 million years.
There’s not really such a thing as “inevitable extinction”. Just look at how long sharks and crocodilians have been around.
@Timotheus24 Perhaps they can briefly take over the vacant ecological niche until the new warm blooded former land animal takes over, but this is maybe a very teleological and reductionist view of evolution.
@Augusto Griffi there is a reason they already got outcompeted by warm blooded former land animals twice....
Bigger whale sharks or manta rays?
2 meters tall and 150 kgs? Doesn't tell me a darned thing until I look up the conversion. If you can't be bothered to provide the conversion to the Imperial system, how about including a human as a scale model to go with the picture? That would have told me in an instant that the Gastornis was a "Big Bird".
Did you just implicate that scientists only listen to scientific music? sounds pretty bigoted to me.
Modern day birds usually develop quickly after hatching, but then... there is kakapo. 😂
"What are birds? We just don't know."
I want an archaeopteryx
They're birds Jim but not as we know them.
Birds 150 million years ago: "AWSOOOOOOOOOOMMME!!!" Birds today: "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhh............."
Sing it with me: birdie teeth are back! 🎶 Birdie's back alright! 🎶
A Velociraptor had WINGS??
Enantiornithes, nice. there cool like Microraptor, and Archeopteryx. I really wouldn't call any of them 'birds' as much as I wouldn't call them dinosaurs simply because of the preconception many have of what "birds as we know them" or dinosaurs look like.
Those preconceptions are of course the faulty understanding of laypeople. Monophyly is pretty clear on the ground rules for taxonomic classification.
should the "pt" in Archaeopteryx be the same as the "pt" in Pterodactyl? I've always wondered if its just easier to pronounce the "p".
It should be pronounced the same way.
Just nonavianian dinosaurs.
DEFINING BIRD LEVEL: ASIAN The stereotype is not -only- directed to the presenter of the video, most transitional fossils of proto-birds came from China and Mongolia.
Nature doesn't care what we classify/define creatures as. We are just catching up to millions of years of history. And that is ok.
"...back then, they were just birds." I'm pretty sure the contemporary term was "Skreee!". Or "Roar!", in some dialects.
Stefan is funny and looks like he has been lifting weights. I learned a lot from this video about crown birds since the mass extinction event and the explanation as to why crown birds are limited in size is interesting.
Gastornis = Chocobo?
So you're telling me birds didn't get as big as pterosaurs because they're thicc?
Bro wa happen? Wa happen to your hair?
So... A genede decided to produce feathers or somesuch instead of fur or scales, right?
I'm supposed to believe Birds have been around in a recognisable form for 150 million years but also believe that a branch of Lungfish became terrestrial Amphibians in 1/10th that amount of time? Gotta love just how ridiculous and illogical Macroevolution sounds.
*"I'm supposed to believe"* It doesn't require your belief. Facts don't care about your creationist feelings.
@Vincent Jackson *"Microevolution is observable and testable "* Every single trait which has been observed to change are the traits which need to change for "macroevolution" to be true. The amount of change observed, which you call micro-evolution, is consistent with the rate of change occuring in that species and the selective pressures of their environment. There's nothing fundementally magical about bears and dogs sharing a common ancestor which you would call macro-evolution, when domesticated dogs, wolves, jackals and foxes provably share common ancestry. All the traits are evolving, in a specific direction, at a rate consistent with expectations.
The rate of evolutionary change and the type of evolutionary change isn't a fundemental constant, skippy. Evolutionary change is mediated through selective advantages, which sometimes may be non-existent for the types of traits you'd love to see accumilate. As for the type of evolutionary change, the vertical derivation of regulatory networks are the backbone of the developmental differences between bodyplans. Thus, one kind of change in one derived form and another kind of change in a completely different derived form are not interchangable when both changes would require a specific derived gene network.
@Augusto Griffi Microevolution is observable and testable while Macroevoltion is a cult based on supposition and assumptions instead of hard data or actual science. There's no consistency and dozens of plotholes in the macroevolutionary hypothesis such as varying rates of evolution between and within lineages that make the idea of "constant accumulation of mutations" a wholly insufficient explaination for what's going on.
Please, explain to me, what keeps microevolution "micro"? What are the mechanisms that stop the process of natural selection at an arbitrary line? If a species can adapt to its environment by way of small changes caused by selective pressure why can't these changes amass to create a new one?
Chicken embryo grow teeth but in the late stage of development the teeth get covered by the beak. The chemical makeup of feathers is also close to scales and they found the gene responsible for it. We could easily manipulate bird dna to have teeth and scales
There was a study making proto-feathers in alligator embryos.
CHOCOBO 7:20
how about "A theropod which can fly or descended from a flying ancestor"?
What if evolution is more of a spectrum, and not a series of steps
@Augusto Griffi I wouldn't call it a problem. The fact we're only finding some fossils, is a blessing for taxonomic classification. It's just that laypeople misinterpret it.
That's exactly what it is, the problem is the taxonomic classification that we use to group organisms in categories.
It's very intriguing why only neornithine birds have survived the K-T extinctions, and no enantiornithe at all. More intriguing than even why crocs still are around. It makes it seem like the non-croc and non-neornithe intermediates were all in some sort of disadvantage (or sets of disadvantages) for the extinction scenario.
It's early installment weirdness.
The dino/bird distinction is so blurry now that some paleontologists have theorized that possibly some Velociraptor-related dinosaurs, maybe including Velociraptors themselves, and their bigger cousins, Deinonichus (the ones from Jurassic Park), were really the first flightless birds, having had ancient flying birds more like Archaeopteryx in their ancestry. There was at least one cladistic analysis (Mayr, 2005) that had Archaeopteryx as more basal/ancestral than those dinosaurs, making them really the first flightless birds.
Evolution is weird. It all started with a puddle; Lizards became birds, muskrats became people, and Pengolans became coronavirus. Darwin was one crazy mofo
That's not a nife... THIS is a nife.
I always laugh to myself about the penguin.
Who else is watching this video with a bird friend?
in short, birds existed before all the modern birds and replace them?
I love birds.
Fiery flying serpents