25 Amazing Facts About Birds

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1. The name of the oldest bird is Archaeopteryx. It existed 150 millions ago.
2. It takes about two hours to full boil an ostrich egg.
3. The Royal Albatross’ eggs take 79 days to hatch.
4. The smallest egg in the world is hummingbird’s egg & the biggest egg in the world is ostrich’s egg.
5. The normal body temperature of birds is usually 7-8 degrees hotter than humans.
6. A bird’s heart beats 400 times per minute while resting and up to 1000 beats per minute while flying.
7. Hummingbirds eat about every ten minutes, slurping down twice their body weight in nectar every day.
8. Hooded pitohui is the only poisonous bird in the world. Their skin & feathers are poisonous. They lived in Papua, New Guinea.
9. To make them more lightweight, most birds do not have bladders to store urine.
10. A bird’s lungs are much more complicated and efficient and take up more space than those of mammals, such as humans.
11. Owls cannot swivel their eyes. Instead they move their heads completely around to see straight behind them.
12. A pelican’s pouch-like beak can hold up to 2.5 gallons of water at a time.
13. Many scientists believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs during the Mesozoic Era about 150 million years ago.
14. A bird’s feathers weigh more than its skeleton.
15. Approximately 75% of wild birds live for less than a year.
16. The ostrich is the only bird that willingly takes care of other females’ eggs.
17. Oilbirds eat oil palm fruits, which make the birds oily too. People near the caves where the oilbirds lived used to trap the oilbirds and boil them down for the oil.
18. Vultures have stomach acid so corrosive that they can digest carcasses infected with anthrax.
19. Some bird species are intelligent enough to create and use tools.
20. Hummingbirds are the only birds which can fly backwards.
21. The chicken is the closest living relative to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
22. Chickens have over 200 distinct noises they make for communicating.
23. The first bird domesticated by humans was the goose.
24. Mockingbirds can imitate many sounds, from a squeaking door to a cat meowing.
25. It’s amazing that Kiwi birds are blind, so they hunt by smell.

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Sources:
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=15+1794&aid=179
http://www.factretriever.com/bird-facts
http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/sciencefacts/animals/bird.html
https://www.mspca.org/pet_resources/interesting-facts-about-birds/