Have you heard about falcons? Not the Falcons, just regular falcons. Swoop swoop, kaw kaw, that kind of bullshit. Real good eyesight? You know: falcons. Anyway, it turns out they’re parrots. Falcons are genetically closer to the brightly-colored chatterboxes that people inexplicably keep in their homes than they are to the other raptors that they more closely resemble. Falcons look like hawks and eagles due to convergent evolution: there’s an optimal shape for a bird of prey.
This is one of many new discoveries about animals that scientists are making every day; TotD now presents New Animal Discoveries:
- Cows are actually fat horses.
- Similarly, donkeys are ugly horses.
- Crocodiles are merely alligators whose parents didn’t have the money for braces.
- Hummingbirds are not birds at all, but Mormons.
- Woodchucks prefer to be called woodcharles.
- Dogs and cats can and do live together quite peaceably.
- Caterpillars don’t turn into butterflies; this myth was started by a Disney documentary in 1957.
- Galapagos tortoises only live to be around 50, but they lie about their age. (“How old am I? Um…135? Yeah, let’s say 135.”)
- The Chinese red panda and the North American raccoon are related, but haven’t spoken since the incident at Uncle Harold’s wedding.
- If you cross a lion with a tiger, you get a liger; if you cross a lion, you get eaten.
- There are over one hundred species of fruit bat, and none of them is capable of understanding Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis.
- No chickens are ducks, but some ducks are chickens.
A note to all.
Falcon nest cams are wonderful things, in a few months there will be cute little babies in the columbus ohio nest.
You watch for a while and you are like Awhhh, so cute I love them cuddly falcon chics.
Then suddenly Mom drops a freshly killed pigeon into the nest and carnage and blood spatter the scene.
It really is the best.
So can you like, umm…, provide like, ahh, a URL for your falconcam???