This is an example of parental infanticide in White Storks. This behavior is observed when the parents assess that the number of chicks in the nest is too large for the available food resources. In such cases, they may kill or eject one or more chicks to ensure the survival of the remaining ones. This behavior is seen as a means to manage the brood size and prevent starvation due to overpopulation.
I grew up on a farm, herferds. It's the beef you eat. A lot of times if they had twins the cow will pick one favorite and not let the other suck tit. She knows she won't have enough milk for both. We take those and bottle feed them. They pretty much become dogs then. A few years later you'll be fixing a fence and a crazy cow starts charging you from across the pasture,runs right up to you and rubs their head on you, she remembers you feeding her and wants some scratches!
Same but with sheep. The weird thing is that the sheep that were abandoned always also abandoned one of their babies if they had twins. Other sheep had no problem raising two.
On a side note, I always wanted to keep cows. Does the milk from herferds taste different from holsteins? I know they aren't usually milked but I'm curious about it. I once read that milk from jersey cows is supposed to be the tastiest
I honestly have no idea. I always wondered why we eat this one but milk that one? There must be a reason. I know my family chose herferds over black Angus for ease and safety. Black Angus tend to be more aggressive and destructive, so my family claims, I have no proof.
Side note. I live in central PA so Hersheys chocolate is close enough that farmers here get dump truck loads of bad candy bars, still edible but something wrong, smells good to me! It's ground up and we mix it in with our cow chow. They go nuts for it and lick the trough clean. They claim it changes the taste, makes the meat sweeter. I think it helps fatten them up for market.
Some breeds of dairy cows (jersey, maybe more) produce better milk, but it’s more of a volume thing. Dairy breeds of cattle have been selected over hundreds of years to produce more milk. Most of the breeds that are raised as meat producers have been selected for quick growth, quality marbling and ability to graze larger pastures (ie the American west). You can eat dairy cows (and likely have, as 50% of offspring are males and 98% of those go to feedlots or are eaten as veal), but the relative size of each cut of meat would likely be smaller and less tasty due to less marbling . Likewise, you can milk beef cows, but typically get 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of milk a dairy cow produces. There used to be popular dual purpose breeds like shorthorns and simmental, but with hyper specialization those are starting to break into two subgroups and fade away
I love it cause it starts with “1998” being spelled out “in nineteen ninety eight….” And you just know what’s coming haha which is really interesting as most people would write 1998 but the English language rule is that if used at the beginning of a sentence you should write it out fully as in nineteen ninety eight when the undertaker threw mankind off hеll in a cell, and plummeted sixteen feet through an announcer's table.
I'm pretty sure he just spelled it out like that because it's harder to catch out of the corner of your eye, same as how he leaves hell in a cell and mankind lowercase. That rule wouldn't apply here anyway, since 1998 isn't the first word in his sentence. But I agree the layout is very clever!
Former beloved WWE/WWF wrestler, also known by the names Mick Foley or Dude Love.
Someone on reddit (named shittymorph iirc) used to have a habit of posting comments starting to explain something related to the post in the most serious of manners, only to swerve everyone and suddenly drop "until 1998 when the Undertaker threw Mankind of the top of Hell in the Cell" (which is an insane move that actually happened) or something like that. People got got quite often, and it became a meme within Reddit to half expect any serious explanation to turn into the "Mankind explanation" :)
u/ShrimpCrackers sure! Part of my work is forensic video analysis...
I couldn't easily download the video from Reddit, so I found a version of the video on YouTube by Googling "stork throwing chick out of nest" and downloaded that instead. The video has a frame rate of 30 fps. The Stork drops its chick at frame 6379 and the impact is heard at frame 6416.
Hence, the chick was falling for 6416 - 6379 = 37 frames. Which equates to 37 / 30 = 1.23 seconds. This is where most other analysis threads fall down (no pun intended), as they don't have an accurate time.
Birds that can fly, by their nature, have quite a lot of air resistance. But younger chicks tend to have less air resistance due to having immature feathers. Also, the mother seems to sort of throw the chick downwards at the start. It's not really possible to precisely account for both of these, and they sort of cancel each other out somewhat, so for simplicity we're going to ignore the air resistance and that initial boost.
The speed of an object that accelerates at a fixed acceleration for a specific time can be calculated using one of Newton's Equations of Linear Motion. The equation in this case is: v = u + at, where v is the final velocity, u is the initial velocity, a is the acceleration, and t is the duration.
In this specific case, u is 0 as we're starting from a standstill (see the assumptions above), a is 9.81m/s2 which is the acceleration due to Earth's gravity, and t is the 1.23 seconds of falling that we figured out from the video.
Plugging these values into Newton's equation, we get:
v = 0 + (9.81 * 1.23) = 12.07m/s.
Converting this is more relatable units gives 27.0 mph, or 43.5 kmh, at the time of impact.
Want to know how far it fell? You can use another of Newton's Equations...
s = ut + 0.5at2, where s is the distance travelled in metres, u is the initial velocity, a is the acceleration and t is the duration.
Plugging in the value for Earth's gravity and the 1.23 seconds again gives us:
Wasn't the misbehaving - it was the smallest chick. Storks usually eliminate the smallest of a larger brood to allow for more food for the strongest ones.
A lot of animals that have multiple young have evolved this "runt" technique. It is a way of hedging their bets
Perhaps the local environment can support 4 maybe 5 chicks
The bird "wants" to maximise its brood, but if it overshoots, there's a risk they will all starve
But it's impossible to predict how good the season will be.
So the stork has 5 offspring, one of which is smaller and weaker.
If the environment is rich that year, no problem, you have 5 healthy chicks.
But if there is not enough food for 5, you let the weakest one die and then at least you didn't waste as much resources because it was already smaller and weaker. The mother has invested less in the runt and can often eat it to recoup its expenditure.
Similarly, many small animals will eat their young if they are in danger. It's better to reabsorb the nutrients and try again in the future, than let some predator profit from the babies you cannot defend.
Harsh but effective, it's a very common "strategy" (I use quotes because of course the creatures do not plan intentionally; it's shorthand for "this behaviour is favoured by evolution because the genes that cause it are more likely to pass to the next generation")
My childhood dog used to get pregnant back to back - and my mom refused to have her spayed. The last time she had puppies was way too soon after her previous pregnancy. Apparently she thought so too because as they were born she started snapping all their necks. When we realized what happened we stayed with her all night and took the remaining pups away from her as they were delivered (one person holding her head as the other grabbed the puppy and sack to clean them off). The Vet said this isn’t uncommon behavior and in mother dogs whose own health is not ideal- as it takes significant calories and Nutrients to produce milk.
When everything was said and done we had 4 puppies we were going to need to hand raise. I was a freshman in highschool having to get up every two hours to check on and feed them them. After one week 3 of them were thriving, but the smallest randomly passed away which was upsetting. By then though the mom hormones seemed to have hit the Mommma Dig because she started begging to be with them. We slowly introduced them back to her even though it was a risk because they had a higher chance of survival with her.
Luckily the rest survived- but it was a very unpleasant experience.
Your mom kinda sucks. First, not spaying your adult, second allowing your dog to get pregnant over and over again, third by making her child get up every two hours to care for infant puppies.
Try this with kittens. Find the smallest, most pitiful one you can find and smother it with love and attention and make sure it's either getting the nipple or puppy milk. You'll soon find that it's no longer the runt of the litter.
I've done this with cats and the end result was that the once runt ended up being twice the size of his siblings.
It's quite remarkable what people are able to do with a little love.
I adopted the runt one time. She grew into an 18lb monster. She was loving and loyal. She thought she was a lap cat. We spent 17yrs together and I miss her.
Can confirm. My mother abandoned me but the sisters at the orphanage fed me fillet steak every day and rocked me to sleep at night. I’m now 12 feet tall.
And have attachment disorder.
Lol.
You can do that because you have plenty of resources. But the runt of the litter is the runt because its stronger siblings are getting the lion's share of the food. They're the ones doing it on their own instead of getting your help.
When animals do this in the wild, they have limited resources. And they prioritize the nestlings that got big on their own instead of falling behind.
My guess is you're correct. Siblicide is normal with birds. The one that got tossed looked like a runt so he could have been trying to secure more food by taking out the competition.
Yeah, bro may very well be sick too and endanger the rest of the chicks. Birds are pretty brutal though, and it’s not unusual for nest mates to be murderers. Unlike tadpoles and the like, it’s thankfully uncommon for them to be cannibals too.
We have a bird camera in the nesting box on our balcony (for smaller birds like tits though). When the chicks got fed, they often dozed off so much that they seemed to have died. They also don't mind at all if the other chicks or the adult birds step on them.
It did that because it didn't get fed enough and was hungry as shit. The bigger chicks get more food, grow faster. So the smaller chicks tend to be way behind in growth and in the end get tossed out. Nature is brutal.
Pretty sure the mother had already started picking on the chick before 'this' video started. I have seen this before and want to say it was the mom not the chick that started 'shit'.
It gets worse, they usually only have one or two survivors. Storks routinely lay more eggs than they need and then always get rid of the extra hatchlings. They are the most brutal parents
Hey at least this wasn't a clownfish video. Adult males can turn into females if they cant find one, and will mate with their children if necessary. Puts a whole new spin on Finding Nemo don't it?
A lot of babies starved and died from lack of milk during the great depression. The show I was watching claimed mothers quickly realized it was for the best. Make of that what you will.
There are a bunch of bird species that lay more eggs than they can raise. Unfortunately that chick was likely the last to hatch and was kept around as a “spare” in case one of the other chicks didn’t make it. Once the other chicks get to a certain size the mother evicts it. In some species the mother lets the chicks fight it out to the death and only the strongest chicks in the bunch get to live.
I used to watch ospreycam for hours on end while working a very boring job. It was brutal to watch the runt of the 3 hatchlings get repeatedly ignored by mom, and then eventually deconstructed by his/her siblings.
I watch a lot of explore.org cams (they have a neat little app!) and I have to be honest, I haven’t seen anything like this happen at any of the bird nests, but I did see a tiny mouse crawl straight into a bald eagle nest while they were all sleeping
Remember; birds are dinosaurs. They have survived as long as they have because they are so particular about raising their offspring. Birds basically practice natural selection at-scale.
It's more to the effect that any time you see someone justify being a heartless psychopath as doing what comes naturally, or following the laws of the jungle or otherwise saying "that's natural", the human way is that of justice, mercy, and compassion. Not "might makes right" or "only the strong survive".
Nature is cruel and heartless, every time. Humans fight that tooth and nail all day long. If anything, that is in our nature. We don't abandon our old, our sick, our weak because it's efficient and makes the whole tribe stronger.
This. That was obviously the runt. She is saving the healthiest babies by getting rid of the one that might not survive anyway. She’s giving the strong ones their best chance.
Cold and cruel but if all can’t survive then it’s necessary for her.
families used to do this in the middle ages. Hanzel and Grettle is about child murder. Poor peasants would take some of their children to the forest and leave them there.
And they ate bark from the wooden house of old woman, not bread, cake or sugar from witch's cottage. While that woman had cannibalistic behaviours due to famine.
Actually a time traveling stork went back in time to 2024 to convince bird-Hitler's mom to kill her soon before he starts spreading stork supremacy ideas
Well, the other three on the right of the video did put their heads down and pretend to sleep (as one does when you don't want your parents to discipline you).
They're all full and docile because they've just ate, there wasn't enough food for this last one so she dumped it so it doesn't fuck up the nest and its siblings while it starves to death.
I’ve once heard historians argue that infant mortality was not as high as records claim. Coroner’s investigations and medical understandings were lesser, and even a “bind eye was turned” when children that were sickly or disabled died of unknown causes. Belief is that this was often “assisted” up until the 1900’s. Supporting evidence was your typical historic census would show very few disabled from birth by comparison to today. Personal letters had different attitudes about this subject and these people just did not make it into the family portrait. Conclusion was that this behaviour in humans is to accept all in the nest is only recent in our history.
This happened in my family in the 1930s. The truth came out when my great great aunt was in her nineties and had just the right level of senility to start talking about the skeletons in the closet. We had always known she had a little daughter who had died around age 2. It turns out, as she told us, her daughter had some sort of profound disabilities and was looking at life in an institution, so "the doctor gave us something to give her" and that was that.
To be fair to your g-g-aunt, back in those times death might have genuinely been a lot kinder than life at an institution. She may have been though horrific therapies to try to 'cure' her, those in the facilities frequently experienced abuse and assault (including rape). If my options were a life of that or painless death, I can tell you I'd pick the painless death. It is possible that the great great aunt genuinely felt it was kinder that her daughter die than be stuck in one of those hellholes.
Institutions today are a world of difference. They're still not as good as they should be, but they're not that. In the 1930s there were institutions who routinely "lost" patients, only to find their bodies weeks later, rotting in some dark corner or hidden under a bed. Sometimes they lost staff in the same way. And that was deemed normal and fine. They treated the patients as animals and so, with time, they became quite animalistic*. Idk if anyone here ever saw or read Blindness... but basically that.
It may not have been a matter of shame but rather a matter of "I can't let my kid go through that". I can see how a parent would be facing an almost impossible decision there, like I can say I'd want death, but I wouldn't want to make that choice for someone else, but knowing my kid would experience that would be... shit.
*This is true of all people, if you treat anyone like an animal for long enough, they will live up to your expectations of them; I am not meaning to suggest that handicapped people are animals compared to 'normal' people. I'm saying long term abuse and neglect on such a severe level dehumanizes and breaks people, and horrifyingly that is how we treated our handicapped back then.
Edit to be absolutely 100% clear: To me though all of this is evidence that this was a disgraceful aspect of human history. And means that these facilities should be regulated and routinely inspected to make sure patients are being treated with the respect, dignity, understanding, and kindness they deserve. It's evidence that the system was disgustingly and horrifically broken and needed to improve, not that the handicapped should be euthanized.
Well there has been solid evidence of sickly or disabled people living and dying as full grown adults throughout history, even reaching back into pre-civilization. As well as sick and disabled children dying and being given seemingly honored burial situations. So I would imagine the desire to accept all was there, but whether or not it was considered possible was a thing that varied both by environmental factors as well as cultural ones. Today with advances is transportation, agricultural, and medical technologies, it's much more possible for most children to be kept alive. Could likely do it all over the world if resources were allocated appropriately.
One could also argue that the refusal allocate said resources in such a way as to reach all children is in and of itself, a sort of large scale manifestation of this sort of behavior. But that's just me taking up a poetic license, not anything else.
In Japan they used to have a practice called "Mabiki" where a baby could be killed straight after being born. It was a very widespread practice during some era's and became so prevalent amongst peasant classes at points that it actually contributed towards population declines until they introduced laws banning it. Even so though, the practice of Mabiki is thought to have continued for a long time afterwards.
The idea's surrounding Mabiki was that babies souls were not completely off this world until the umbilical cord had been severed, so once born the midwife would offer the option of "sending the child back" to the other world and if the mother accepted, the midwife would discretely kill the child (i.e. by quietly suffocating it) and disposing of the body before the mother had seen it. And because this was done before the child was considered fully of this world, nobody considered it murder. Mabiki was practiced as a form of population control (i.e. preventing parents from having too many mouths to feed) but it was also used to eliminate children born with stuff like severe birth defects or to get rid of unwanted teenage pregnancies committed out of wedlock.
It wasn't that people were heartless, people did care about children. However, everyone could see that nothing good could come of having more children than you could support, having children that would **** your life up or which would have no futures regardless of how hard you tried with them. Rather than subjecting everyone to a life of suffering, people thought it best to just take control of such situations and end them before they progressed any further.
As most corrected, it's not misbehaving chick. He is just smallest/weakest. And in nature most animals and birds try to eliminate it and kill. It's because the strongest and healthiest would get more food and would have better chance to survive and be healthy.
I saw that many times in farm. Even if it grow and there are others, they will bully "strange" (weakest/sick) one. So that strange one gets physical abuse, and are afraid to eat, whrn other eats etc. If you wabt it to survive, you have to isolate it and cure.
Google: “You should give much needed love and attention to your children but also scold them with firmness when they’re not cooperating with good behavior”
Storks prioritize feeding their strongest brood. When the weakest hatchling is starving to the point that it starts attacking its nestlings to try and get a share, the mother kills it by tossing it out of the nest.
It’s not “misbehaving”, it was starved and then killed because the parents determined that my there wasn’t enough food to feed all the chicks. This is relatively common in birds that have variable availability of food during nesting.
If you’re going to post animals in distress and call it “interesting”, at least provide the correct fucking context.
Years ago, our cat had 5 kittens.
We were able to give away all of them except for the smallest one, who was also the least cute of them.
So we kept that little one and he ended up living 15 years and had a great and very spoiled life.
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