The Bird Family Tree: How all the Major Bird Groups are Related to Each Other.

[@andyjay729]

The fact that penguins, perhaps humanity's favorite flightless bird, are closest related to one of the birds that spends the most time in the air (albatrosses) is one of my favorite stories in evolution, up there with how we primates are closer related to mice and rabbits than to, say, dogs and cats.

[@peteracton2246]

Primates, rodents and rabbits evolved on a scatter of islands where Europe now is. Like the dinosaurs which lived on these islands before them, they exhibit island dwarfism, although a few of the primates, including us, got bigger when they reached continental land masses to the south and east. To get bigger they have to eat a hell of a lot in places like rainforests, tall-herb on volcanic soils or, for us, farmed landscapes when we had eaten most of the the megafaunas. We are megafauna now. Have you noticed that all those lab models of us, monkeys, guinea pigs, rabbits, mice and rats are our closest kin.

[@andyjay729]

@@peteracton2246 I have to wonder if the primates appeared first and rodents and rabbits split from them, since we obviously still have our canine teeth whereas they don't. Another "dun-dun-DUN" moment upending humanity's tendency to put itself atop the tree of life; something evolved FROM us.

[@peteracton2246]

@@andyjay729 Thanks AndyJay. I love this kind of stuff. Yes, human hubris needs humbling (imho!). I've often thought that rodents are ahead of primates in evolutionary terms so this fact supports my view, although I doubt I'll get many of my species to agree on this. I recall David Attenborough commenting that his Life on Earth TV series would consider a hierarchy all the way "up" to humans and then a promotional poster for a later TV series of his still had humans at the top of the tree of life. Primordial slime all the way up to Queen Victoria (Professor Ronald Hutton)!

[@Direblade11]

How else is a bird getting to Antarctica other than flying farther than all other birds? Is weird though

[@andyjay729]

@@Direblade11 Actually, penguins seem to have evolved on New Zealand.

[@marioare859]

Glad to see a new biology channel on my feed. I wish you make it big, there's never enough science divulgation!

[@josephrion3514]

Why was this video at the top of my feed? You are so new. Fascinating.

[@Gelatinocyte2]

KZbin tried out a new algorithm some time ago.

[@starwarsgames5467]

Insane Video Quality for a Channel of this Size, instant subscribe. Hope your channel will get the recognition it deserves, i look forward to watching you grow brother💪

[@maureenj.odonnell4438]

Agreed, I'm signing-up!

[@doodlebirdo]

I have literally been wanting to get into bird phylogeny, and boom! This video! Even me, a person that has had an interest in birds for a decade or so now, learned things that I didn't know. Like, what do you mean Old World Orioles are their own separate group?! I have always seen them as thrushes! (probably due to them being placed beside them in the field guides...) Super informative video! Definitely coming back for more!!! Love your presentation style too! Reminds me of Clint's Reptiles :)

[@EricRay2662]

12:53 IDK why I said most famous. I just meant, "the next linage". 28:39 my bad, that's an Indigo Bunting, not an Indigo bird. Though, Indigo Buntings are still in the Passerida.

[@aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa790]

I was going to say "to be fair, they are indigo birds" but actually everything but the tip of its head is light blue, so...

[@Chompchompyerded]

Love the yellow headed blackbird thumbnail.

[@Chompchompyerded]

The way the ornithologists I hang with all pronounce "corvids" with a short "i". Think "vid" as in "video". Great vid, by the way. I'm going to recommend it to young budding naturalists, as well as novice bird watchers.

[@anniestumpy9918]

You are a very talented educator, that was fantastic to listen to! P.S. proud to be the 421st subscriber 😊

[@CazabichosManny]

I'm a zoologist (I specialized in soil invertebrates) and, well, my ornithology classes were fucking awful, taught by a professor who clearly didn't know anything about birds, whose exams were hard as fuck, and whose ppts were mostly oudated text and wikipedia links... I ended up hating the group as a whole and never got to understand it, to date they are my least favorite group. With this video, now I can say that I understand the basics on the phylogeny of birds. Thank you.

[@robinmatz6686]

I took part in a trip to hungary (from germany) for my bachelors degree. The Professor was a misogynistic, racist alcoholic and his ppts were mostly photographs, mostly his own that went on for like 50 pages. For my presentation on my part of his material i condensed it to 12 pages, and he was so sceptic at first if that would be enough. But guess what, you can efficiently present concepts on few well defined slides. Anways, i also had to construct the list of our observed birds in phylogenetic order. The order that he gave me was probably around 30-50 years old i guess, lots of morphologic trait clustering in there. That dumb fuck said that phylogenies dont make sense anymore since "the damned geneticists" started "meddling" in the systematics. The guy was 83 years old at that point. Except for the Professor that was a solid trip

[@glitteringdoom]

I love the kind and excited energy you bring to this! Delighted to find this channel.

[@clubsandwich559]

This video was MADE for me! I’ve been super absorbed with evolutionary biology recently, and just yesterday I was thinking I need to learn more about bird phylogeny. Subscribed!

[@gmeucskeo8474]

About the hummingbirds evolving from a nightjar like form, do you think it could be convergence with butteflies? Butterflies' ancestors were also nocturnal like moths, but started spending more time being active at day due to predation from bats. Could owls or some other predator have been a similar pressure for hummingbirds to become diurnal?

[@EricRay2662]

I don't think that is an unreasonable hypothesis, but I do think that it would be very hard to prove. Given just how long ago swifts and hummingbirds broke off from other nocturnal relatives, I think the reason why they evolved to be diurnal might just be lost to time. But who knows, paleontologists can get very inventive with ways to learn new information, so maybe a solid reasoning will emerge one day.

[@harrybrick9907]

I love this video, Your enthusiasm and energy were great. I particularly loved how you worked in explanations of general terms like how to read an evolutionary tree, convergent evolution, and radiation. Only idea for improvement would be a brief explanation of what evolutionary biologists consider when they assign species to a group, such as genetics, bone structures, fossils, etc. Great video, thanks again.

[@JanetStarChild]

Fantastic video; very education, and I love your enthusiasm and energy! I find that birds are one of the most fascinating group of creatures ever.

[@EricRay2662]

Link to all images used in video: docs.google.com/document/d/1H-N4hDWKNErP1GbFzQy6Bt2c4Iu0oNTd9lTLcAl3yHE/edit?usp=sharing The shape of the bird family tree depicted here is largely based on these sources. Prum et al. 2015. A comprehensive phylogeny of birds (Aves) using targeted next-generation DNA sequencing. www.nature.com/articles/nature15697 Stiller et al. 2024. Complexity of avian evolution revealed by family-level genomes. www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07323-1 Kuhl et al. 2020. An Unbiased Molecular Approach Using 3′-UTRs Resolves the Avian Family-Level Tree of Life. academic.oup.com/mbe/article/38/1/108/5891114?login=true Houde et al. 2019. Phylogenetic Signal of Indels and the Neoavian Radiation. www.mdpi.com/1424-2818/11/7/108 Suh. 2016. The phylogenomic forest of bird trees contains a hard polytomy at the root of Neoaves. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/zsc.12213

[@Sepi-chu_loves_moths]

Sources hype

[@Cloveis]

You are a great educator. Especially in science this is so important, keep doing this

[@EricRay2662]

Thanks for the encouragement Cloveis!

[@yasibacardi4355]

Incredible video. Insanely well done and covering an overwhelmingly complex topic in such a clear way. I am currently in my apprenticeship to become a zookeeper and we obviously have to learn about all animals on the tree of life and birds tend to be the most difficult part for all apprentices and the biggest issue in the final exams. Thank you so much.

[@callusklaus2413]

May the winds of the algorithm blow ever in your favor

[@maureenj.odonnell4438]

Agreed!

[@BirdManCam]

I'm wearing a regent bowerbird shirt while I watch this, how pleased I was to see a picture of one pop up on screen! Great vid, ive thoroughly enjoyed. Laughed and learned

[@agnelomascarenhas8990]

Thank you, for the much needed topic of bird classification. Images with family name need to stay on screen for a longer time for us newbies to the subject.

[@danas8194]

Your videos are great and cool perspectives and deep dives on birds, I’d love to see more!

[@opabinnier]

Tip: the "-es" ending is always a normal, full syllable (well, it IS Latin) So, the ending -formes is 2 syllables. And AVES (birds) is 2 SYLLABLES, Neoaves are 4 sylls. Easy. (Neoaves is an awful word, being another of those new coinages which mix languages; Neos is GK for young, auis is Lit for bird..... tele is Gk for far, uisio is Lat for sight ...etc!)

[@thechosenone5644]

^ OP is correct. i think besides adding the syllables, even scientists pronounce some groups differently so I wouldn’t sweat it too much unless you’re a latin major.

[@thechosenone5644]

for a youtube video, I do think you should look up pronunciations beforehand though. I’m just trying to say the difference between saying “ehz” and eez” doesn’t matter much. Great video, though

[@erkkiheikkila-kyyhkynen310]

[neoa:we:s]

[@papablezt211]

22:47 terror birds mentioned!!!

[@perguto]

Actual classification starts at 6:22

[@meadow-maker]

I really like the video, thank you. it would have been great if you'd added the names of the birds along with the photos the flashed up and left them on the screen just a bit longer so we could look at them without having to rewind the video. thanks.

[@janetpoulsen2122]

I am so happy to find this video. I've been wanting for quite some time now to learn more about the details of the bird family tree. I've watched this 2 times in a row just now.🐦🦆🦉🦅

[@littlemissmisses2981]

Wasn’t much into birds before, now I have a burning passion. Great video keep it up!

[@notacaulkhead]

This was great, Eric. Your video was suggested to me on KZbin after I curiously was searching on Google about the relatedness of chickens, turkeys, and peafowls. I was surprised, when I reached the end of your video, to discover that you only had 330 subscribers. Well, now you have 331!

[@benfitzpatrick9669]

This is fire dude, keep dropping! You got a new fan and sub

[@DarthBrutal]

Super good presentation. Keep it up man, can't wait to see more

[@graphite2786]

Oh my god. You are the second most passionate bird person I've ever seen. Truly It was like looking into a mirror😁 Subbed, liked, commented and shared - you are my spirit animal (Picathartes🤙)

[@arc1279]

idk why KZbin showed me this video, but it's very good and you should keep making videos

[@rofavilla]

that was a very cool overview on the subject, well presented with an enthusiastic presentation, kudos! Greetings from Rio!

[@Chompchompyerded]

I would have thought that cranes were more related to forklifts than rails, and that rails would be more closely related to I-beams. Shows what I know.

[@Cylindropuntia]

Excellent video sir, there aren’t a lot of videos on KZbin covering the phylogeny like this one.

[@prussianblue6382]

Thanks for the great video! I loved the information, as well as your enthusiasm!

[@valinagabrielle]

Thank you very much, you are a charismatic and charming host, great vid, very entertaining

[@keeganwymer3145]

Great video!!! I have been craving learning more about different phylogenies, this was fascinating!

[@fariesz6786]

you have served your flock proud, brother

[@fenneko7]

Loved this video! I've gotten into birdwatching recently and have always loved learning about phylogenetic trees :3 keep up the good work ♡

[@kellyharrison5184]

Fascinating! You just got yourself a new subscriber.

[@angeladkins3257]

Excellent Video and very informative!

[@noah.noah12]

Absolute banger of a video.

[@skylerpoduska]

I really thought the thumbnail was a bird bracket: a bracket of the best bird. I was excited to see

[@luutas]

I just wanna say: Wow & Thank you

[@themadmanwithapen]

Great video, great quality, great presentation, charisma, very thorough but not too dense or deep, I love it! I’m subscribed and excited to see more

[@albapadros8776]

Supercool video!! Thanks! 🤩

[@zach792]

Such a cool video deserves way more views please make more !!

[@katieashdown2145]

Great video, I hope we'll see more from you!

[@Jessgitalong]

I live in Hawaii. Interacting with diverse bird species has made I nterested in learning more about birds. I know that, in several species I’ve dealt with firsthand (repopulation of endangered species, invasives, and domestics), fewer of them were needed to establish healthy breeding populations than mammals, pointing to different genetic mutation mechanisms or rates. I bird-sat a Japanese White Eye rescued as a chick for several weeks. Learned some ways they communicate, especially the disapproval chirp. A White-Rumped Shama bird used this sound at me while I was doing yard work, and I knew to move from where I was squatting and cleaning up a planter-bed. When I was out of the way, she grabbed a huge centipede I unknowingly disturbed while cleaning! Crazy! Seems like these unrelated song birds have some sort of common language they use to communicate across species. Also saw common signature behaviors in another two species: American crows (North America) and Common mynahs (Hawaii). They both hold “court”. They get in a group, start squabbling, then gang up on one of the members as though to punish them. Looks brutal. Can’t find any information on these behaviors anywhere. Surprised there’s not more research on bird social behaviors.

[@carlossandoval6858]

Thank you for your hard work!

[@mewmeowski]

fascinating video! learned some things and loved everything about it!

[@earthworm5016]

love the enthusiasm 🤩

[@maureenj.odonnell4438]

Excellent lecture!

[@eirenicShepherd]

Thanks for making a video on this topic

[@NullCreativityMusic]

Nice video! Keep 'm coming!

[@SilverScarletSpider]

thank you clint’s birds

[@kenworthunofficial1934]

this is everything ive had a special interest in for years, throw in a transformer at the end and buddy i would have exploded! tysm for sharing this with us!

[@jansmith6527]

Incredible video, but you should keep the images on screen longer when you’re listing families/species

[@evilstormgnat]

Up to the top of the algo with you!

[@Somethin14]

This is a great educational video! Keep up the good work!👍

[@derrickstorm6976]

That intro almost made me cry, it was so bad but clearly had full attempt behind it

[@deithlan]

Amazing video, I adore phylogeny videos

[@bullen4000]

I LOVED this! Thank you. Now I want more ;)

[@JediGDZ]

Good explanation of propinquity! You are worth following

[@JediGDZ]

Hello distinguished individual! Lovely video!! Congratulations 🤟🏼💚💛❤️

[@michaelwood368]

Please do one of these where you explain how theropods are related! You can start with birds, raptors, and troodontids and work from there!

[@orcinusvox5107]

Amazing info!!! More images next time if possible :)

[@jong.8203]

Love this stuff! Very comprehensible

[@prodweylo]

You're such a cool guy. Idk why you only have 600 subscribers

[@bensuperdetka]

Joining the choir of new subscribers!

[@maureenj.odonnell4438]

Me too!

[@reka_ng]

You're such an engaging speaker and educator! Great video! Please do a video about motmots! If not for the educational value, then the ultimate excuse to say motmot as much as possible! Also, doobly-doo 😂😂😂

[@EricRay2662]

Honestly, the idea to make a motmot video solely for the purpose of saying motmot over and over is far more tempting then it should be.

[@jonstfrancis]

Thanks for covering this! These seem to change a bit over the years as to what's related to what. Especially the placing of hawks away from eagles! I also seem to remember owls being placed closer to frogmouths and such like once. Sorry, I laughed after you wondered if you pronounced Opisthcomiformes correct but then pronounced Hoatzin wrong; the a is sounded ho-ah-tsin

[@Mawshroom]

I'm an amateur bird photographer in central america and I managed to snap a pic of a motmot the other day. I was surprised to see it fly into a hole in the ground though, was not expecting that at all!

[@rursus8354]

You know your stuff! Good video!

[@johnwalters1341]

Enjoyed your romp through the Aves. At 28:38, your Indigo-bird appears to be an Indigo Bunting, in a different family of passerines. Indigo-birds live in Africa, while the Indigo Bunting is from North America.

[@thesecretthirdthing]

Thank you. Helps out an aspiring birder quite a bit :) I still gotta learn anatomy tho

[@Kalishir]

Thank you! Amazing content! Subscriber Nº 132!

[@RadicalCaveman]

At the end of the video, I half-expected you to fly away.

[@andrewmuirhead9261]

Lets goooo new channel

[@Sepi-chu_loves_moths]

You deserve so many more subs

[@aduck5639]

I like this video! Your narration is great, but i wish there were more pictures up while you're talking so i can better relate what you're saying to what you're talking about. When you go through the neoaves, i dont have enough time to find which category you're talking about before the image disappears. Maybe im just dumb, but i want to learn.

[@myragroenewegen5426]

I've never seen "Up", but I'm surprised they found this obscure brown shore bird and made it bigger and tropical levels of colourful. Why? There are so many other obscure birds that are cool-looking and colourful, some of them quite big. If they wanted a water bird, they could have found that too. I'm annoyed by this already, and I never saw the movie. Do they have a good excuse? I mean how sad for kids to realize these birds exist, but then realize they are little and brown. Not that animator couldn't have chosento make that entrancing too, if they wanted the challenge. Why did they do this? Anyone got a theory?

[@arceuszilla4834]

A snipe hunt is a common idiom identical in meaning to a wild goose chase. The bird in Up probably derives its name more from the expression than the actual species

[@EricRay2662]

I'm pretty sure that the discrepancy between Kevin's (The snipe in UP) design and the look of the real bird is because the real bird is not the snipe concept that the film makers had in mind. The term "snipe" applies to a bird but it also applies to a mythical animal at the center of a prank. From my understanding, until relatively recently (as in, the last few decades) the "Snipe Hunt" was a common prank people would try to pull. In the "Snipe Hunt," you would convince someone naïve to the concept (usually a kid, and I think it was most common for kids to pull this on each other) and take them out in the woods to hunt a snipe. But there is no snipe, so you have just duped them into looking like a fool as they try to find something that does not exist. I do think there were multiple variations of the prank, but the main point is that you temporarily trick them into believing in a non-existent creature. At the start of the movie, Mr. Fredricksen sets up this exact prank on the kid Russel, so this is the snipe concept they were working with. Its just the twist the movie does on this prank is making it turn out the snipe is actually real. This is actually the concept I grew up knowing. I remember my mom telling me a story of how her dad took her out on a snipe hunt as joke when she was a kid. When I first got into birding and learned there was a bird called a snipe my first thought was "Wait! The snipe is a real animal!" I do not know why both the real bird and the mythical animal have the same name. Maybe there is some really old connection that I don't know about, but the two seem to pretty separate in the modern day.

[@andyjay729]

@@EricRay2662 I think that at least back in Britain and maybe even the early histories of the USA and Canada, snipe hunting was actually a popular pastime, to the point where that's the origin of the words "sniper" and "guttersnipe". The term probably has something to do with this, perhaps if snipe populations declined and/or snipe hunting fell out of fashion.

[@forrestunderwood3174]

This guy was great.

[@mariiris1403]

Please leave the illustrating pictures up longer!

[@mariiris1403]

... much longer!

[@jfu5222]

Another new subscriber here!

[@coldblaze100]

The floor must have been lava fr when the swifts evolved

[@andyjay729]

For a few seconds around the future site of Chicxulub, Mexico some 66 million years ago, it kinda was. And possibly as a result of that, that was also true in India at the same time.

[@bernatgarcia6348]

Very interesting! You're a natural born speaker

[@CrimsonFeatherz]

Hey bird dude! Great video, I appreciate your enthusiasm and the information. I might be wrong, but i think it is /old/ world vultures who belong in the accipitre family, rather than the new, with their slender beaks and walking feet? Pardon me if wrong. I also might like it if the pics and phylo trees were up for a smudge longer and hair bigger (especially on niche birds or families that a well-informed amateur herself may not immediately know). Thanks for the content! Take care!

[@EricRay2662]

I think I see where the confusion is here. You are right, new world vultures are not in the family Accipitridae, but old world vultures are in that family. But, even though new world vultures are not in the family Accipitridae, they are inside of the larger clade Accipitrimorphae (which is what I display here). This broader clade includes the family Accipirtidae, New World Vultures, Secretaybirds, and Osprey. It sure can be confusing when these clade names all sound so similar! If that still doesn't make much sense, here is a link to a video that covers this section of the tree in much greater detail then I was able to here. kzbin.info/www/bejne/banZZIGCfLRomtE

[@noahj3686]

can someone help me understand reading the phylogenetic tree again? I got a little confused when he said mammals are more related to lizards than they are to amphibians, but amphibians are equally related to mammals and lizards? (4 - 5 mins)

[@EricRay2662]

Here is another video that covers the subject. I hope it helps! kzbin.info/www/bejne/iaLQk5-rmMeCsM0

[@tjarkschweizer]

You can imagine it like family members. I this case the mammals and reptiles are siblings and the amphibians are their uncle. Do you get it now?

[@icaroporpino]

AMAZING!! please more tank

[@turbotreehouse9780]

You did my boy the Lyrebird dirty. Thanks for mentioning the Kaguu tho

[@turbotreehouse9780]

Jokes aside this was simply fantastic, thank you!

[@kycrio5356]

It'd be cool to see a video going into more detail on passerine phylogeny

[@goodlord370]

love learning about birds, awesome video my guy

[@opabinnier]

Actually The kingbird lends its name to the group: TYRRANOS is an archaic Greek word for KING. (And yes, the modern word tyrant comes from it- but the root word is just king.)

[@wesleynewsam]

Wicked good video ;D

[@merryn9000]

Would have been interesting to see how birds fit into the Theropod family tree

[@sashabertasius1046]

12:26 for a second I thought that Grebes were related to Hesperornithines…

[@kurofune.uragabay]

Watching you (going nowhere fast for a while) _while_ wearing the same DKNY 5646's... 😲 Didn't know that falcons are not closely related to hawks and eagles, that was interesting. 🙏

[@T2_the_only]

Love this video

[@eewilson9835]

Geez, to repeat, its where the branches lead, where they connect it noteworthy, do not look at the top photos as the relation, its the NODES. Its when they last shared a common ancestor, thats showing how recent of a shared common ancestor, the higher the node, the closer related. Amphibians are more misunderstood than ever, they became equally related to mammels and lizards, but everyone in the WORLD thinks they are practically a walking fish. Cmon folks, They broke off at the same moment in time, not more related to fish, and they are discriminated all of the time, Amphibians are accused of fish crimes and this must stop.

[@andyjay729]

To be fair, thanks to some meme videos, some people think all tetrapods are just "walking fish".

[@tjarkschweizer]

​@@andyjay729 Except that meme is perfectly accurate. Tetrapods are indeed a type of fish.

[@andyjay729]

@@tjarkschweizer Going by that logic, mammals are just hairy reptiles (we're closer related to them than to amphibians). Although personally I think "Reptilia" should be retired as a wastebasket taxon, since it's still uncertain whether turtles are closer to lizards or birds. Reptiles should be split into archosaurs (birds and crocodilians), squamates (lizards and snakes), and testudines (turtles).

[@tjarkschweizer]

@@andyjay729 No, that is not indicated by that logic at all! Reptiles and mammals have a common ancestor. That means they are only related but not the same thing! The thing with tetrapods is that they directly descent from a bony fish and therfore they are bony fish. That's just how it works. Also, the "reptile" clade as it is right now (being synonymous with Sauropsids) works perfectly fine. You seem to be very confused.