Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Laurin Bogel bamb here, what's brown, white and blue? And
Speaker 1: moves like a TikTok dance challenge. The blue footed booby
Speaker 1: a wild ocean bird that's named after an old insult
Speaker 1: and is the subject of our episode today. And yes, friends,
Speaker 1: that means I am going to be saying the word
Speaker 1: booby a lot here, So fellow immature humans, go on
Speaker 1: and get the giggles out, now, okay. The blue footed
Speaker 1: booby is a medium large seabird that makes its home
Speaker 1: in the tropical to subtropical bits of the Eastern Pacific,
Speaker 1: from southern Mexico to Peru. They have salt and pepper heads,
Speaker 1: white breasts, dark brown wings, and prominent, often bright blue
Speaker 1: webbed feet, arranging in shades from cyan to azure. They
Speaker 1: have long, pointed bills that sometimes also carry some blue coloration,
Speaker 1: a sort of cigar shaped bodies, and narrow angular wings.
Speaker 1: They stand a little over two and a half feet
Speaker 1: tall about eighty centimeters, so about the size of a goose,
Speaker 1: but shaped more like a duck with a pointy bill
Speaker 1: and tail. And yes, they dance, specifically a male bird
Speaker 1: will engage in a mating dance To attract a particular female.
Speaker 1: He'll raise one foot at a time in a move
Speaker 1: known as sky pointing, and circle around her in an
Speaker 1: exaggerated strut to fit for the ministry of silly walks.
Speaker 1: If she's impressed, she'll join the dance, and both birds
Speaker 1: will extend their wings out to their size, raise their heads,
Speaker 1: and call out with whistles and long, hollow sounding trumpets. However,
Speaker 1: they are a rare seabird that's otherwise quiet most of
Speaker 1: the time. The blue footed booby is believed to have
Speaker 1: gotten its name from early Spanish explorers in the mid
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds, who doubted the intelligence of these and related
Speaker 1: birds and called them pajaro bobo, meaning a bird that's
Speaker 1: foolish or silly. English speakers transformed this to booby bird
Speaker 1: a century later, possibly in conjunction with an existing English
Speaker 1: insult of booby, meaning someone who's inept or childish. They
Speaker 1: were referring to the way these birds move clumsily on
Speaker 1: land and the unwitting way in which they approached humans
Speaker 1: without fear. About half of the population of blue footed
Speaker 1: boobies lives in the Galapka's Islands, the famously ecologically fascinating
Speaker 1: chain of seventeen volcanic islands in the Pacific Ocean, about
Speaker 1: six hundred miles or one thousand kilometers west of South America.
Speaker 1: The islands are part of their closest neighboring country, Ecuador,
Speaker 1: which in nineteen fifty nine declared ninety seven percent of
Speaker 1: the island's land area a national park and preserved the
Speaker 1: surrounding waters as a marine reserve. This declaration was preceded
Speaker 1: by Charles Darwin's visit to the islands in eighteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: where the flora and fauna that developed there in extreme
Speaker 1: isolation inspired his evolutionary theory. The other half of the
Speaker 1: world's blue footed boobies arranges along the western coasts of north,
Speaker 1: central and South America, with most of these coastal denizens
Speaker 1: concentrated in Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru. The blue footed
Speaker 1: boobies leave their nesting grounds at daylight to hunt their
Speaker 1: preferred prey of small animals of the open ocean, which
Speaker 1: takes them on flights over cold waters to fertile areas
Speaker 1: where deep swells ascend to the surface that are rich
Speaker 1: with things like sardines, anchovies, and squid. A. Once a
Speaker 1: group of boobies locates as school, they'll dive down into
Speaker 1: the water from great heights at high speeds. They can
Speaker 1: hit the water going sixty miles an hour that's ninety
Speaker 1: five kilometers an hour, and use that force to plummet
Speaker 1: some eighty feet or twenty five meters below the surface.
Speaker 1: On their way back up, the birds snap up their
Speaker 1: targets in their beaks. Their skulls contain special air sacks
Speaker 1: to prevent brain damage from these enormous changes in pressure.
Speaker 1: Female birds tend to be a little bit bigger than males.
Speaker 1: It's thought that this helps them dive deeper and scoop
Speaker 1: larger catches, and thus build up nutrients for egg laying.
Speaker 1: After finding a mate for the season via the aforementioned dance,
Speaker 1: blue footed booby pears nest on land right on the
Speaker 1: rocky terrain of shorelines, but they don't build elaborate nests
Speaker 1: in preparation for eggs. Instead, after the female bird lays
Speaker 1: one to three eggs on the rocks, both partners work
Speaker 1: to create a nest around the eggs by doing what
Speaker 1: comes naturally, excreting waste yep. The birds take turns protecting
Speaker 1: the nest and flying out to catch dinner, with one
Speaker 1: staying behind to keep the eggs warm and work on
Speaker 1: their humble abode. Over time, they create a circular walled
Speaker 1: nest a around the eggs, built with layer upon layer
Speaker 1: of poop, but not all is always well within those walls.
Speaker 1: Male booby's on shore of egg eternity with a new
Speaker 1: female may destroy the eggs. Other booby species may maraud
Speaker 1: the nest and break the eggs, and because the eggs
Speaker 1: can hatch days apart from each other, older chicks may
Speaker 1: kill their younger competition them's the breaks, but each new
Speaker 1: generation highlights the reason that blue feet work for the booby.
Speaker 1: The color comes from pigments that the birds in jest
Speaker 1: through their fish rich diet. Any bird that's weak or
Speaker 1: unhealthy will struggle to feed itself and therefore not gain
Speaker 1: the brightest shade of blue for its feet. When the
Speaker 1: male birds do that mating danced feet held high, they're
Speaker 1: showing off their fitness to the female birds. For the
Speaker 1: article this episode is based on, has to Forks spoke
Speaker 1: with Lisa M. Webb, a licensed clinical psychologist who collected
Speaker 1: data on blue footed boobies in the Galapagos Islands during
Speaker 1: her master's in Environmental Health and conservation science. She said,
Speaker 1: male blue footed boobies are evaluated by potential mates by
Speaker 1: the blueness of their feet. This blueness is an indicator
Speaker 1: of health and strength, as so a female will choose
Speaker 1: a mate with vivid, dark blue feet as that suggests
Speaker 1: a greater probability of healthy offspring. Their feet are so
Speaker 1: striking partially because they're webbed, known in biology as totapalmate feet.
Speaker 1: This means that all four toes of the foot are
Speaker 1: joined by webbing that makes the bird's feet efficient flippers
Speaker 1: in the water. A Webbed feet also help blue footed
Speaker 1: boobies regulate their body temperature. If they become too cold,
Speaker 1: they can balance on one leg and tuck one cold
Speaker 1: foot into their downy white belly feathers. If they become
Speaker 1: too hot, the blue footed booby cools off by pooping
Speaker 1: on its own cerulean feet, love that their bodily waste
Speaker 1: is so multi use. The blue footed booby is currently
Speaker 1: listed as a species of Least Concern by the International
Speaker 1: Union for Conservation, which watches out for signs of endangerment.
Speaker 1: There are thought to be about ninety thousand individuals living
Speaker 1: across their native territory. However, climate change and particularly ocean acidification,
Speaker 1: are having an impact. As populations of the bird's food,
Speaker 1: like sardines, has been going down. The blue footed booby
Speaker 1: has been on a decline as well. Their population has dropped,
Speaker 1: especially sharply on the Galapagos, which has researchers worried about
Speaker 1: this delicate ecosystem in which these birds serve as predators
Speaker 1: and prey and contribute nutrients back to the soil through
Speaker 1: their poop. This is yet another reason that we should
Speaker 1: all do what we can to help the environment, including
Speaker 1: encouraging our elected officials to do so too. After all,
Speaker 1: where else are we going to get dancing bluefooted birds
Speaker 1: that make such good use of their excrement. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article the bluefooted Booby Dance gets
Speaker 1: the Girl every Time on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by
Speaker 1: Lareel Dove. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership
Speaker 1: with how Stuffworks dot Com, and it is produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit
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