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The Domestic Turkey and the First Thanksgiving

10,000 Birds

The very first thing we notice about this large member of the Galliformes is that there is a wild version and a domestic version, and although the two are rather different, they are both given the same species name, Meleagris gallopavo. This is not entirely unknown among domestic animals, but many domesticates have no living wild version.

Turkey 199
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“Peacocks and Picathartes: Reflections on Africa’s Birdlife”

10,000 Birds

And apart from local people, primate researchers sometimes spot it, but it is a species seen by fewer than ten living birders. The rest of the 216 pages long book is devoted to various African bird families and half a dozen individual species. He has authored several other books and many articles, largely on natural history.

Congo 264
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Teal Lake Shiraz (2019)

10,000 Birds

The quacker in question was named Ripper, a drake Musk Duck raised at the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve near Canberra. Though many bird species are capable of imitating human speech, Ripper made headlines for being the first duck ever known to have done so.

2019 217
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The Famous Grouse: Smoky Black Blended Scotch Whisky

10,000 Birds

Like all other “Red Grouse”, Gilbert is a member of a subspecies of Willow Ptarmigan found in the heather moorland of Great Britain and Ireland, a population that’s treated by some authorities as a separate species.

Sheep 192
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Filling the Gap Left By DeBooy’s Rail

10,000 Birds

Back in 2009, Tai Haku sent us a fascinating post exploring a question that ecologists worldwide grapple with: can the translocation of rare species into niches left empty by extinction be successful or justified? There are any number of concerns one could raise. How ecologically similar are the two species? It is extinct.

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Here’s the new bird family tree. It’s amazing.

10,000 Birds

processed the entire genomes of 48 bird species and compared nearly 42 million base pairs of DNA (Hackett et al. Ratites, Tinamous, and Fowl. Now we move on to the Neognathae , which also has two very deep branches that lead to all the other living species of birds. Erich Jarvis discuss key findings. ). Open Jarvis et al.’s

Family 279
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Moral Vegetarianism, Part 3 of 13

Animal Ethics

Most moral vegetarians list fish and fowl as animals one should not eat. The question can be raised: Why should these organisms be killed and others not be killed? One might first ask, “Why does higher intelligence mean that one species is more valuable than other species?” What Meat Should Not Be Eaten?

Morals 40