The Black-headed Pittowie is a small bird native to Papua New Guinea and is the first and only bird species in the world to be scientifically confirmed as “venomous”.
The Melanesians, the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea, have long known about the bird’s venom, but the Black-capped Pitowie’s abilities were only discovered by accident about three decades ago in the West.
In 1990, ornithologist Jack Dumbacher had the opportunity to go to this island in the Pacific Ocean in search of birds of paradise. He set up a fine-meshed net between the trees to catch them, but he ended up finding a Black-headed Pittooth by accident.
As he tried to catch the birds from the trap, they scratched and bit his fingers. Instinctively, he put his hand in his mouth to relieve the pain, and suddenly Jack felt his lips and tongue go numb, then a burning sensation that lasted for hours.
Jack later suspected that these symptoms were caused by birds, so he tried putting the feather in his mouth again. The numbness and burning pain quickly returned. At that moment, Jack unknowingly discovered the world’s first poisonous bird.
Jack asked the natives about it and it seemed that everyone already knew about its poisonous nature. They called it the “trash bird” because of its foul smell when cooked, and it would be the last thing they would eat if they had no other food source.
Out of curiosity, Jack sent a sample of the black-headed pitou feather to John W. Daly at the National Institutes of Health, the world’s leading scientist specializing in natural toxins.
In the 1960s he had discovered the toxin ‘batracotoxin’ in Colombian poison dart frogs, and he had found the same substance in the feathers of black-capped pittowie.
Batrachotoxins (BTXs) are neurotoxic compounds that block muscle nerve impulses, causing numbness, burning, paralysis, and, if you get enough of them, heart failure. Batrachotoxins are considered the most toxic compound in the world by weight of all the toxins in nature.
Later research found that the black-headed pittowie not only has toxins in its skin and feathers, but also in its bones and internal organs, although the concentrations are low. Each bird has different levels of toxins in their bodies.
The source of the black-headed pittovy’s venom is still hotly debated among scientists, but most believe that the birds do not produce the venom themselves, but rather get it from their diet, particularly the venomous choresine beetle.
And this is the story of the black-headed pit viper, the only bird in the world that is poisonous, and it may change our perception of birds as non-poisonous.
Source: odditycentral
