They’re bin juice-drinking heathens. For the longest time we’ve tossed them aside and let them wreak havoc in just about every public area.
Despite all this, ibis birds are actually helping Australia with one particular issue… cane toads.
Per the ABC, scientists on the Gold Coast have spotted the humble bird friends using something called the “stress and wash” method to make the toads safe for them to gobble down.
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Emily Vincent, the local coordinator of Watergum’s Cane Toads program, told ABC News it was “quite amusing” to watch the birds prepare their hoppy meal because it’s different to how other animals eat the poisonous pests.
“The ibis will pick up cane toads and they will flick them about and stress out the toads,” she said.
“What this does is it makes the cane toads release toxins from the parotoid gland at the back of their neck, which is their defence mechanism when they’re faced with predators.
“Then they’ll take them down to the creek and wash them.”
Looking back in ibis-story, perhaps ibis have been doing this longer than we thought… and we just never noticed 🙁
Let that be a lesson. Don’t judge a bird by its disgusting behaviour.
