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Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
Every year, little black-and-white birds called pied flycatchers make the lengthy trek from sub-saharan Africa to northern Europe to feast on caterpillars, claim a nest, and have babies. This typically goes off without a hitch, and the birds return to Africa a few months later, offspring in tow. But recently, some flycatchers have arrived to find their nesting sites occupied by haughty, territorial great tits. And those birds don't just chase flycatchers away—they brutally attack them, kill them, and eat their brains.
Source: https://www.popsci.com/great-tits-murder-climate-change/
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Great Tits are Killing Birds and Eating Their Brains. Climate Change May be to Blame.
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:18AM (8 children)
Great Tits are pretty bad-ass birds without being stressed by climate change, they'll kill and eat basically whatever they can.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday March 03 2020, @07:00AM (1 child)
They've turned quite nasty in recent years. They also now peck through the skin at the edge of horses' hooves until they can get at the fat underneath. These wounds bleed a lot and eventually get infected. Same for their feasting on cows' udders, which hang down within reach of the horrid little creatures.
I had previously considered them tame and friendly but I guess that's just because I haven't happened to be in a situation where the could take bites out of me. Birds are very cautious that way. Vultures are infamous for waiting until there is not even the slightes movement left. Magpies, while they will group and try to eat small animals like cats alive, will fly away when menaced by visible projectiles. You don't even have to get that close ... so far.
Seagulls are another menace. In the beginning of each spring they go from digging discarded foor from the public trash cans to learning to follow people for dropped food. Then during the summer they rapidly learn progressively aggressive methods for getting people to drop their food, culminating in group attacks.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 03 2020, @10:56AM
That's Komodo dragon strategy. Imagine the family of Great Tits you can raise with dead horses as food sources.
And crows - you've seen the Hitchcock movie? Could be a prescient documentary, except that the birds don't return to normal after a few days - unless you believe that God created the earth in a few days...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by driverless on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:18PM (5 children)
While I like great tits on bad-ass birds as much as the next guy, I'm not seeing what this has to do with climate change.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 03 2020, @01:41PM (1 child)
Interesting story about an interesting animal: 1,000 clicks
Interesting story about an interesting animal + randomly tie in climate and the world is ending: 1,000,000 clicks.
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Freeman on Tuesday March 03 2020, @04:21PM
Interesting story about an interesting animal + randomly tie in climate and the world is ending + title that alludes to a lot more than a bird: 100,000,000 clicks.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 03 2020, @02:08PM (1 child)
When I was studying environmental contamination in Houston, it came to my attention that BPAs and similar pollution was responsible for early and larger breast formation in the affected populations... and nobody seemed to be complaining about that part.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 04 2020, @05:35PM
Yep, plastics have been known to cause it for a while, BPA being just one of them.
It seems that early on-set puberty in girls is just something accepted and noticed with a casual attitude in the media.
I've yet to meet anyone that tries to prevent this effect; if anyone I know has stopped using BPA products, it's because of cancer fears and toxicity in babies being fed from BPA bottles; no one is doing much of anything to prevent girls becoming sexually mature faster or boys becoming less masculine.
Maybe the rich men at the top are actually, but quietly, doing something for themselves? I mean it's no secret old guys like young gals, and that rich guys seem to be able to pay their way into things.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 03 2020, @07:41PM
Species can be aggressive during their breeding season.
These two species' breeding seasons and locations did not overlap, historically.
Now, because it gets warmer earlier in the season, they do.