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For the Love Of Nature, Art and Bad Humor
A Comic Gallery of Creative Expression in the Pursuit of Knowledge
Limpkins
Aramus guarauna - also: carrao (Spanish), courlan (French), crying bird
LIMP-kins- because early European settlers thought
they walked with a limp. They don’t. Were the limpkins
also hangin’ out with mermaids?
They have a creepy bird call.
It was used as jungle ambience in Tarzan films and to voice the hippogriff in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Limpkins are fancy.
They eat escargot.
Every day. All day. More escargot please. Always.
In fact, they're so devoted to it that they evolved specific body parts just to eat it more easily. Their bills are
shaped like tweezers and curve to the right, just like
the right-handed spiral of an apple snail shell.
They’ll eat mussels, insects, crustaceans, lizards, frogs
and even worms when there is an escargot shortage.
But really they just want an all-you-can-eat snail
innards buffet. Like cruise ship passengers.
Also just like humans: some mate for life. Some don’t.
Unlike humans, their babies hatch and leave the
nest on day one - though they follow their parents
around for a while, presumably motivated by the promise
of raw, slimy, snail carcasses.
References:
https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Limpkin/overview
https://www.audubon.org/field-guide/bird/limpkin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limpkin
https://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/birds/waterbirds/limpkin/
https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/science/five-facts-limpkins/
https://www.nps.gov/ever/learn/nature/limpkin.htm
Special thanks to Jay Exum, Ph.D. Wildlife Ecology for his expert fact checking!
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