The impact that wiped out the dinosaurs also wiped out all songbirds, except for in (ark) Australia. Australian songbirds then spread out to rest of the planet.
The closest living descendents (aka basal lineages) are the Lyrebird and the Rufus scrub bird. The lyrebird's song is a mixture of its own song and other birds songs. They have been also been known to mimic chainsaws, car alarms, camera shutters, and human speech.
28 Comments
who@feddit.org · 37 pts · 221d
TIL, not YSK
SARGE@startrek.website · 24 pts · 221d
Apytele@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 221d
dellish@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 220d
A brightly feathered, singing T-Rex is the thought I can't stop giggling about.
FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 220d
I was considering deleting this because of some reports but you know what? Miles O'Brien has a point, the post stands. Carry on and thank you for your service to Starfleet.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 221d
Equally valid as both
Novocirab@feddit.org · 28 pts · 221d
Love it. I will from now on imagine every song bird as singing in an Australian accent.
crank0271@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 221d
Every morning they're screaming "g'day, mate!"
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space · 7 pts · 221d
More like “Wanna root?”
ada@piefed.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 221d
They're screaming something! Torresian Crows, Pied Currawongs, Noisy Miners, every morning they're around my yard yelling at the top of their little lungs!
Chef_Boyargee@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 221d
I’ve got a gaggle of kookaburras in the neighborhood too. Only a few lorikeets and an occasional cockatoo.
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 221d
I mean not to nitpick but there are (were?) hundreds of aboriginal languages, none of which were related to the colonialist accent. And they were there for like thousands of years. So like fuck these birds if they’re speaking English tbh
Woht24@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 220d
ParadoxSeahorse@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 220d
Sorry, it was tongue in cheek! But Christ now I wonder what they’ve seen o_0
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz · 13 pts · 221d
To be fair, all birds who went extinct back then also still had a common ancestor somewhere, all life on earth does.
acockworkorange@mander.xyz · 9 pts · 221d
There's plenty of convergent evolution. Plants keep evolving into trees, so there isn't a single origin for them. Crustaceans keep evolving into crabs.
WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 221d
Always and eternal is the carsinisation cycle. One glorious day we too will realize the optimal form and shuffle sideways into Nirvana. Together, as a species, we will snip the ties of suffering that bind us to this samsara.
k0e3@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 221d
Craaab people, craaab people♫
Hawke@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 221d
There’s a single origin for everything. It doesn’t matter how many times the descendants of that common ancestor have diverged and reconverged.
acockworkorange@mander.xyz · 1 pts · 221d
1: You're talking about whether a common ancestor exists for all life, I'm talking about common ancestor for a trait (e.g. tree bark, bird song, these are traits and not organisms).
2: There's current debate on whether life emerged multiple times or if it was only once. There's evidence for both and it's not a settled debate.
Hawke@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 221d
LillyPip@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 221d
So, what about Australia made all the birds sing?
foxymulder@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 221d
screaming out of anxiety at all the stuff that can kill them.
but in a pretty soprano voice
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net · 5 pts · 221d
Being far away from chicxulub
altphoto@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 220d
Imagine a 10' tall lyrebird roaming free thru the streets....honking, pretending to be a camera, an ambulance, a fire truck.
At night it keeps repeating parts of the news...."and the president will invade Eur! And the p..."
My best guess is that's why we don't see any of those things these days. Someone or something got pissed.
Woht24@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 220d
altphoto@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 220d
Song birds must have been much larger in prehistoric times I assume. Maybe not 11' tall but what about the size of a crow or a dog? Imagine chirping so loud you can still hear it if you close your doors.
dellish@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 220d
Australia has song birds about the size of a crow, they're called Magpies. They are at times aggressively territorial, extremely intelligent, family orientated and very pleasant to wake up to in the morning.
Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 220d
Occasionally silly https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hu3hrXjMtNI
Occasionally terrifying https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EXYf2DTOsvI
Song at 1:23 of the second video.
altphoto@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 220d
Yeah, like that, but with constant song bird singing.
jaybone@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 221d
Thought the thumbnail said Song Bogan.
acockworkorange@mander.xyz · -4 pts · 221d
That's nice and all for a science or bird community. Not here, though.