There Is No Such Thing as a "Raptor"

Hawks, eagles, owls, falcons and other birds of prey are awesome! I mean, who doesn't love raptors? But what if I told you that raptors are not a thing? What if I told you that falcons are more closely related to parrots and crows than they are to hawks, eagles, or owls? Well what if I tell you all about the raptors, what they are, how they are related, and what else they are related to? Let's dive into the Telluraves!
#clintsreptiles #raptors #birdsofprey
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[@ClintsReptiles]

Looking for the perfect shirt for this Phylogeny Phebruary? We've got your back! Check out these two LIMITED EDITION shirts available right now: clints-reptiles.creator-spring.com/listing/new-you-can-t-evolve-out-of-a clints-reptiles.creator-spring.com/listing/you-can-t-evolve-out-of-a-clad

[@jebVlogs556]

They may not be "raptor" or raptor like but I wasn't going to argue with my teacher as kid as you do. I see you fact checking all your professors Clint 😘😛😌😔

[@LegoGotenks]

How was this comment posted one day ago if this video was posted 15 minutes ago?

[@CoolRanchPropaganda]

@@LegoGotenkspatreon

[@Janeway1269]

I plan on getting the "you can't evolve out of a clade" shirt that labels a bottlenosed dolphin as a "whale!" I have typed countless comments that a dolphin is a whale, thanks to all the people trying to correct everyone that Orcinus orca is "actually a dolphin!" LOL!

[@C.S.M.Hageroth]

All I could find out about Coliiformes is that it likely stems from the greek word κόλοιος (koloios).

[@anthonysimeone365]

SHOW ME THE BIRDS!!!!

[@crinsombone5380]

We'd love to but the censors won't allow it

[@jebVlogs556]

Show me the passiformes. These are my favorite from thst group." Golden Pheasant Morning Lark Lyre bird European Raven Mockingbird California Blue Jay

[@sgt.angara2838]

YES SHOW US BIRDS!!!!!

[@jimroberts3009]

The Golden Pheasant is NOT a Passiforme. It is a Galliforme.

[@waverod9275]

Is there anyone who can give him a bird?

[@nedweeks6964]

I collect eggs from my chickens daily, I am the oviraptor!

[@windhelmguard5295]

but do you grab the eggs with your feet?

[@pidgeonlanding]

Only problem is that Oviraptors likely didn't steal eggs.

[@jimroberts3009]

Me too, a Mammal eating Dinosaur eggs!

[@VienerVater]

@@windhelmguard5295 raptor/RAPTARE have nothing to do with feet in the meaning of the word, it more means like "carry away, kidnap" or something

[@Luna-sp7be]

​@@pidgeonlandingI think OP was more referencing how oviraptor means something like egg-stealer in Latin.

[@andregroo]

"If you like kingfisher we can't be friend" -some small fish

[@jgb0017]

I came for the eagles and stayed for the falcons. Show me the birds.

[@icewink7100]

If Clint was a character in an Ancient Greek tragedy, his punishment would be to be banished to a universe without molecular phylogenetics.

[@carsonianthegreat4672]

Raptor is a behavioral-morphological category, not a cladistic one. It’s like the old definition of “beast” (which refers to cattle, horses, oxen, etc).

[@halbkuppe4895]

and as that, it’s pretty useful. Raptors be doin raptor things

[@DrSpooglemon]

... and beasts be doing beastie things!

[@Hi_Im_Akward]

Would that count for trees as well?

[@catpoke9557]

Yeah, it's like how fish is used as a physical description of an animal rather than referring to any vertebrate

[@etymonlegomenon931]

"Jellyfish" and "panda" my favorite examples of this

[@MrHugemoth]

Yes, do one on ravens. The ravens that live in Death Valley understand how zippers work. I watched one unzip my motorcycle panniers and take my lunch. They also know how to turn on the faucets at campgrounds to get a drink of water.

[@richardbethel5086]

that sounds like its a effective way to survive alongside humans

[@kevc5532]

Currawongs in Tasmania have learnt the same along the popular hiking routs

[@BryceShamwow]

I wonder if they turn the taps off after they drink.

[@NeonCicada]

​ @BryceShamwow What would be their motivation to do that? 🤔

[@MrHugemoth]

@@BryceShamwow The taps have a spring loaded lever that the bird pushes down with it's foot so it shuts off when the bird leaves.

[@Abbanellie]

As a parrot enthusiast I am SO happy you're defending budgies!!

[@Riceball01]

I like parrots too, I love watching parrot videos, particularly ones with small parrots like budgies and parakeets. One of the funniest I've seen is where one sings to, apparently, wake up its human. The human tells it to be quiet because it's too early. So the bird obligingly stops singing, for maybe 30 seconds before it starts sing again, and more loudly.

[@mandowarrior123]

They're such typical parrots which is their selling point as a pet, surprised,people don't get it. Not green or red or something?

[@NotSoNormal1987]

I love budgies. I have 5 at the moment. And 2 of my girls are laying eggs. Hoping for some baby birds. 😍 I have really enjoyed breeding and raising budgies. They're awesome little things.

[@Mephilis78]

I always called them Parakeets and didn't even know the word Budgie existed for a long time.... despite having them as pets most of my life.

[@PMickeyDee]

You know, I've had an awful day & had zero interest in watching a video about birds right now. But I am so glad I clicked this one because the level of genuine excitement & enthusiasm Clint shows when teaching about animals has absolutely made my day 😁

[@sparkyfister]

"Grabby foot murder birds" are my favorite.

[@shinyseppen1189]

“If you’re into that kind of thing” Good sir, you know dam well we’re into kind of that thing!

[@robbyg2490]

"Murderous feet"

[@circle_cut_sandwich9190]

PLEASE I NEED A FULL OWL VIDEO!!! I love owls so much! It would be absolutely incredible to see someone as educated as you talk about them in detail ❤

[@giovanni385]

Guatemalan here, I loved your comment about Quetzales and gringos. You are now living in my heart forever.

[@anothersquid]

The raven-form thing is similar to how birds are not bird-hipped dinosaurs.

[@cik105]

well, imagine being called bird-mimic dinosaurs despite existing before said birds, and despite being more closely related to those birds, STILL not being bird-hipped dinosaurs. Maybe dinosauria as a whole are the hag fish of archosauria. Heck maybe in all of reptiles

[@joshuasgameplays9850]

@@cik105 If dinosaurs are the hagfish of reptiles, that would mean that crocodiles are also the hagfish of reptiles, and that seems silly.

[@RabblesTheBinx]

​@@joshuasgameplays9850 crocodiles aren't dinosaurs, though.

[@joshuasgameplays9850]

@@RabblesTheBinx Correct, but they are archosaurs, which means they are just as distantly related to other reptiles as dinosaurs are.

[@quixomega]

I nearly exploded when I found out that birds were lizard-hip dinosaurs

[@achristiananarchist2509]

AI Clint's issues are one of the main concerns with people using LLMs as actual research and content generation tools. People call them "hallucinations" but I've never found this to be a term that particularly accurately captures what is going on. A hallucination implies that in any other state one can see things clearly, but LLMs basically *only* hallucinate. They don't really know anything. They just take a prompt as an input and then generate the words that are the nearest neighbors in the answer space to the prompt, then generate words that are the nearest neighbors to those words, and so on. I work on somewhat similar problems, but related to images instead of words, and when you examine the neighbors for something like an image search algorithm, most will make sense, some always won't. AI Clint can't say "I don't know" because AI Clint doesn't know anything. If I asked you where third street is, you would think of where third street is, and, if you knew, then construct a response that would communicate the information back to me. AI Clint never does that middle step. He hears a question, and jumps immediately to constructing a response in the proper form for the question. Since the data he was trained on does contain factual information, if where third street was was present in that training data it is quite likely to include that information in the response, since something has to go in the noun and direction spaces when he says "noun is in direction", and third street and the direction to third street are probably going to be the best candidates, but it never actually thinks about where third street is. He just generates an appropriate sounding response. The response is always a hallucination. It's just usually a hallucination that reflects reality, at least to an acceptable degree.

[@leilavalens3617]

That's a damned good description of the situation.

[@emmetstanevich2121]

So basically, they don't know what answers *are,* but just what an answer "looks like," right?

[@achristiananarchist2509]

​@@emmetstanevich2121 Yeah kind of. Generally speaking, all systems like these really "know" are a huge collection of vectors and their distances from one another in a high dimensional vector space. Imagine that you are inside a giant room and there are containers laying around all over the floor. Inside of those containers are bits of messages in a language you can't understand hinting at concepts you can't imagine. But the containers are different shapes and clustered together with other containers, so you can infer relationships between them using that information. Once you are really familiar with all those patterns, if a new message came in representing a question, whose words were packaged up using the same system as the answer bits and dropped into appropriate clusters with related concepts on the floor in your answer room, you may eventually be able to walk over to those clusters and pick up the closest containers of the right shapes in the right order to generate a message that answered the question, despite not really having any idea what you are saying. If you imagine those clusters scattered across a several thousand dimensional space that you were able to see and move around in, instead of on the floor of a room, that's kind of what AI algorithms tend to do when asked to retrieve information. In the case of an LLM, it was trained on some massive corpus of people writing explanatory material, and, in the process of training, its vector space ends up full of vectorized words clustered together along various axes that kind of capture a bunch of different things like how conceptually related the words are and how often they tend to appear next to one another in a grammatically correct sentence. When a given word is selected, the one that is in the best position with regards to both grammar and relevancy will tend to be in the best place along the most axes to be picked up by the AI. This is a simplification, and with most production AIs there is a bunch of pre and post processing going on to minimize the likelihood of trash being output by the model and catch and fix trash when it comes out, but when it comes to the AI model itself, it kind of just goes to the spot in the hyperroom it lives in where your question drops, picks up the words closest to it, and puts them together in a way that reflects its training data.

[@nofreewill]

I am not an expert or anything; I am just an enthusiast who tries and experiments with new small llms. As far as I understand, LMs are the next token predictor. A good llm will be able to predict the next token with good quality and accuracy, and my hypothesis is that to predict the next token more accurately, it may need to understand the concept at a deeper level so it can predict the next token better for the required sequence. I know many people who are into fine-tuning llms, and they say datasets are key to achieving most things. Nowadays, synthetic datasets seem to push the boundaries, and some people I heard are also trying to give llms the ability to refuse if they lack confidence in predicting the next token. I have another hypothesis related to this: llm might hallucinate more because our current language is not consistent enough; many times it is vague, not logically made, or just a general issue we also have with our language. I think they should try making a more refined language and then train on it, but it seems like an expensive process. Developing llms to me is more like reverse engineering intelligence; now llms can already reason, and it only seems to be increasing each day as a better method of dataset generation and training. I am not an expert on this or anything; I just hang around the LM community and like hearing people suggest and discuss ideas for making LM better. I mean, it's a scientific process that will get better the more we explore its weaknesses. I also think llm's creativity also arises from its hallucinations, but in my experience, some hallucinate way more than others, so there is definitely a way to reduce it, as some do more and some do very little.

[@BulbasaurLeaves]

I think 'confabulation' is a better term than 'hallucination' for when LLM's make those kinds of mistakes. A hallucination is when you perceive something with your senses that isn't there. LLMs don't have senses to perceive anything about the world. Confabulations are when you have large gaps in your memory and your brain fills them in with elaborate false memories that seem plausible.

[@macro_the_acro1736]

Fun fact! The Seriemas, (Order Cariamiformes) are the only extant animals with a sickle claw. They are essentially modern day dromaeosaurids! They use this claw to pin their prey to the ground as they dispatch it.

[@LivingInBoredom]

“But not side to side or back in time” some of these phrasings are so good 😂 what an excellent teacher, clint’s videos and his absolutely infectious enthusiasm for even the weird parts (especially the weird parts) of biology have been the way i’ve finally been able to break into understanding animal taxonomy. It’s been such a bogeyman subject of mine for my whole life and now I’m finally starting to get it! thank you clint!!!

[@GH0STH0ST]

man...Clint's excitement over these subjects just makes me happy

[@StaraptorEagle]

I love how he loves all animals, not just the traditional reptiles!

[@mommanikki4812]

Love it!

[@Eidolon1andOnly]

I was once taking video of a kangaroo rat at night in the Mojave desert. One second it was there, I blinked my eyes, and it was gone. I moved the camera around to search for it but it was nowhere to be seen. Even switching to thermal showed nothing. It was only after reviewing the footage that a few frames revealed a barn owl snatched it. Never heard or saw the owl and I was only 10 feet (maybe 3 meters) away.

[@schrodingerscat4503]

That’s so cool. I’m a big fan of owls.

[@Psittacus_erithacus]

How interesting! For years, I volunteered at a local sanctuary that serves as a hosptial for sick/injured birds of prey. Fed a variety of owls in that time. The healthy ones were housed in quite large enclosures and witnessing them retrieving their (in this case pre-killed) meals was always something. Certainly left me in no doubt of the plausibility of your tale.

[@Mephilis78]

Everything owls do is spooky, aint it? Even catching a mouse is like a paranormal experience to an onlooker.

[@alanhonlunli]

Clint is easily my favorite channel right now. His enthusiasm is so contagious! Great work, once again!

[@noahmaas1670]

This channel is dangerous. I have other things I need to do, but here I am learnin' birds.

[@jordanbabcock9349]

"Show me the birds!" Did exactly as told sir.

[@TiggerIsMyCat]

Owls are cat software on bird hardware (cat's whiskers serve the same purpose for the same reason)

[@una.bambi444]

SHOW ME THEM BIRDS!! -a future ornithologist

[@taylorhillard4868]

Did a little digging and all i could come up for the Coliiformes is; Coliiformes -> colius form/shape birds as noted by the genus it encompases Colius -> Koleos, greek for scabbard, possibly in reference to the long tails in the same way a sword's scabbard is also long.

[@LivingInBoredom]

I went down a similar path, but i found the wiktionary page for “coly” which the entire etymology section is “New Latin colius, probably from Ancient Greek κολιός (koliós, “a kind of woodpecker”).” I’m inclined to believe that linnaeus could’ve reasonably named the type species (wikipedia cites Loxia colius from him, which is now referred to as Colius colius) as “woodpecker like”. So maybe coliiformes is “woodpecker shaped”? There’s also the 3rd option on the wiktionary page for κολεός that refers to a nearby word for a “green woodpecker”

[@Kallastar.]

​@@LivingInBoredom i dont know if this helps, but in spanish, french and in portuguese (as a rarely used word) hummingbirds are called "colibri", people say that it derives from latim "coluber" (snake) but i dont think it makes sense If that "coli" from "colibri" derivates from "colius" then it would make more sense, because it have a big beak, like a woodpecker

[@furiousfemmeyazeth3362]

@@Kallastar. Your observations are honestly on the right course, especially with woodpecker. "Colius" is a New Latin term -- and one that was rarely used -- that means along the lines of "coil". As to how to that relates to woodpeckers? Well, their tongues do coil around their skull, and perhaps these birds resemble woodpeckers (?). Another hypothesis is that colius is used instead of the Latin verb "colligo", meaning "to bind" or "to gather", which could be attributed to their behavior. However, I do not study these birds so I really cannot tell you the exact reason why but present 2 theories of my own. I'm just a Latin nerd >

[@m0thernature730]

From all these descriptions we can as the question what do snakes and woodpeckers have in common with shape?… the answer is long… Guys they are named long tail… … or Snake tail… 🤷‍♀️ just what i can infer loving psychology and biology and the etymology my instinct is to look at the bird and look at other things that were named (hippocampus is a part of the brain named because of how it looked). We can understand words change throughout a language so what we see as “woodpecker, snake, shape.” could have simply been “long shaped.” And as it was used it started being used in new ways to describe new things and eventually the one word that was simply “long form, long shape” became “snake/woodpecker, shaped” We see it today in our own language if you look up the meaning to some words they don’t mean at ALL what they used to. We have to give Latin/Greek the same respect Language is fluid and changes by generations. One word may mean something in a dictionary but in the language it was spoken mean something else. For all we know all of those were a way to call something fat or skinny. And if the name was named afterwards they do look like woodpeckers and they have a snakelike tail. The name fits no matter the reason. 🤷‍♀️

[@m0thernature730]

Same goes for the “scabbard”

[@jasonwardbirds]

Show me the birds! Yes, I’m a biased ornithologist who would love to see this channel cover all of the birds. All. Of. Them. Thank you, Clint for a wonderful video!

[@KAZVorpal]

I believe colius (the root of coliiformes) comes from the Greek "kolios", which is the name of a kind of woodpecker. And yes, coliiformes are not woodpeckers. But as far as I can tell, it's a neoclassical analogy based on the general shape of the birds.

[@mikekuppen6256]

Wikipedia agrees.

[@cadr003]

κολιός seem to be a dialectal variant of κελεός, whose ultimate origin is unknown

[@jelenarosenberg-vahtera8105]

From the Proto-Indo-European *ḱel- (“to cover”).

[@Rumda.]

​@@jelenarosenberg-vahtera8105 So do lots of words, but if you're saying who should call them hell birds I could be persuaded...

[@krankarvolund7771]

I've found three different eymologies, one being the one you given, the other being that it came from Coleus, the name for the jackdaw, a sort of corvidae in Europe, and the third being that it came from "Coleos" in greek meaning a sheath, in reference to its long tail.

[@bernieshort6311]

You got it right Clint; we could do with a segment completely on owls. They are amazing creatures. Bring it on - please. I do not know anyone who is as enthusiastic about their job as you are, you inspire people and just draw them in, its electrifying.

[@Grinnar]

I had a sun conure named Quetzal. She was a wonderful and beautiful creature. We still miss her.

[@ActiveAngel2010]

Great idea! Do a Corvid episode. Corvids are such beautiful, intelligent, charismatic, and widespread birds. And you can probably find a friend to bring one as a live example on set. (Bonus if you can find 2 friends with both a crow and raven) You can discuss all the many differences between crows and ravens, as well as the myths around these popular birds! You can also market this video to the Halloween/October crowds (along with the "terrible skeleton" reviews). Jeez, that could easily be a 45 minute episode for a relatively small group. I knew a charismatic researcher that studied them at the Field Museum in Chicago several years ago.

[@liliqua1293]

"If you don't like kingfishers, we can't be friends, or you're a small fish." - Clint Laidlaw T-shirt plez

[@kathyweinstock3264]

Clint, love this video. Did not know Falcons and Hawks were not as closely related as they seem! Love to see more features focused on Owls (ears pointing on up and one down!), Ravens vs Crows, the family of Night Jars and Whippoorwills, extinct birds like the Death Bird! and How, again?, Pterosaurs are not related to birds... etc. yes, so many fascinating creatures...you will never run out of amazing videos! Thank you !

[@ohdarling6657]

Loved the way you explained circleing in voultures, they are my absolute favourite birds. I still remember when i lived close to a small forest and would always see circle behavior through my bedroom window, it was sharing a space with them that made me realize that circleing behavior really does have nothing to do with finding food. When you see circleing behaviour it often does last quite a bit, and without any trying to reach the food, which would make no sense. However, when i was cycleing near the forest i remember vividly the strong smell of decomposition near the street, and, surprise surprise, a line of 25 vultures (that i counted of) just sitting there by the side of the road, absolutelly one of the most astounishing and joyfull moments i ever experience. THIS is true voulture feeding behavior!

[@doa1001]

When the legend that is Sir David Attenborough finally moves on (which I hope isn’t any time soon) I’d be quite happy for you to take up his mantle.

[@Janeway1269]

Yes! With the right funding Clint would be limitless!

[@kj_H65f]

The highest possible honor for a zoologist

[@napoleonfeanor]

He sadly doesn't have the charismatic voice

[@thomicrisler9855]

​@@napoleonfeanorI think Clint is plenty charismatic! His enthusiasm is contagious.

[@LymanGreen]

@@thomicrisler9855agree, Clint’s enthusiasm makes up for any lack of mellifluous tones.

[@ChristopherRucinski]

As for Coliiformes, mousebirds' original names were Coly/Colies. It appears that the scientific name of "Colius" came directly from that original name of Coly. So the etymology of Coliiformes is "Coly (bird)" + "-iformes". So we just need to know why Colies were called Colies before the late 1700s when the scientific term of "Colius" was first coined. Fun fact, while Coly was the original name in English, mouse-bird (muisvoël) was first used in South Africa, but mousebird only started to take hold within the 1900s

[@mennovanlavieren3885]

Interesting. In dutch 'muis' means mouse and 'vogel' means bird. The 'g' probably got dropped since it is a guttural sound, leaving 'vo-el'. Where the 'o' is pronounced like the 'ou' in 'though' or the 'o' in Mozes.

[@pendlera2959]

There's a plant called coleus, which supposedly comes from "koleos" or "sheath", based on the way the stamens are joined together. Not sure how useful this fact is, but I found it interesting.

[@Lucernam]

That's pretty interesting! If I had to guess at a moment's understanding, I know that a coleus is a flower and that small birds (like hummingbirds) are nectar feeders and pollinators. So I would guess that the name comes from small, nectar-feeding birds. At least, originally.

[@valiantknight6364]

Apparently colius comes from kolios which was a Greek species of woodpecker. So... Befuddling.

[@wildflower1397]

Cauliflowers?

[@Gryzzeline]

I just love these Phylogeny videos. so much information and so up to date, please keep making them!

[@user-tc1gj3db6t]

Delightfully funny and informative. Keep these videos and your humorous approach rolling!

[@Mermare]

One of my favorite Larson cartoons says "Birds of prey know they're cool."

[@miskolinaccc]

I remember I had a really tough exam at the faculty and when I was walking to it, I heard a little ploinking sound. I was walking by the river, so I started looking at it and saw that the sound was made by a kingfisher diving into the river. I never saw it again so far into the centre of the city (Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia) and I'd like to think that it brought me luck, I passed that exam :)

[@Dintermint]

I love how this isn't just a phylogeny video but cool facts and first principals video

[@teeteepalooza]

clint you are so entertaining. i love when you keep a straight face AND when you giggle at your funny bits. i’ve learned tons of interesting facts and, one day, i may even retain them.

[@zacg_]

Okay, my mine has been blown. I've never looked into this with that much depth but I had believed that Raptors were an actual group of birds of a common lineage. Clint, you are a scholar and a gentleman and we appreciate the education.

[@Eidolon1andOnly]

Think you mean *mind has been blown, not "mine." Usually when a _mine_ has been blown it takes off a person's limb or worse (think landmine).

[@razor1uk610]

​​​@@Eidolon1andOnlyindeed, perhaps 'mine' usage in this case is a situational context related euphemism,.. .. either a part of their genitalia was either semi-lovingly oralized, or it was unlovingly removed by some form of traumatic force ?

[@zacg_]

@@Eidolon1andOnly you are correct.

[@mstalcup]

@@Eidolon1andOnlyThe letters "d" and "e" are close together on a qwerty keyboard. Maybe it was a typo that by chance created a similar-sounding word.

[@Eidolon1andOnly]

@@mstalcup _Mine_ and _mind_ also sound similar when spoken outload, so maybe speech to text was used. It really doesn't matter since it was an opportunity to joke about mines.

[@xion1629]

"they're too square to be compared to a Phoenix..." Clint, it's hip to be square

[@dirtywhitellama]

Maybe it's square to be hip.

[@Strawberry92fs]

I'm so excited that you were excited to talk about the Owls! Going into this they're my favorite of these groups! If you did a whole video on how owls are silent that would be so cool

[@RamadaArtist]

"And owls? Gosh we don't really know where they go." I knew it! I've probably been related to owls this whole time!

[@poisonthedragon]

I’ve been watching this channel for so long but all of the AI photos are really getting in the way of my support and love for this channel. Not the AI assistant / AI Clint, because I assume you used your own work to create that, but the amalgamations of artworks and photographs that exist through stolen work. Those could have just been photographs, or art. Those could have been credited works instead of just slop pictures with a little “AI generated” stamped onto it. Come on, you have to see how much this hurts artists and everyone who’s photos have been taken without consent and fed into generators.

[@fulldeepshadowmmon]

Your describing a human artist. What do you think inspiration is?

[@poisonthedragon]

@@fulldeepshadowmmon You have a deep misunderstanding about what both art and inspiration is if you think AI art is the same as regular art

[@fulldeepshadowmmon]

@poisonthedragon care to elaborate, or is your entire argument, "nah uh your wrong."?

[@poisonthedragon]

⁠@@fulldeepshadowmmonI mean yeah this is literally my opinion and no amount of discussion will make me think AI art should exist, but also since I’m an artist I will clarify. I feel like you don’t understand the differences between an AI generator and a real human being. AI art is a parasite, it cannot exist without human artists and human art, and the way it exists right now is stolen labour, it’s theft, broken copyright and its being used to kill off the art industry as a whole. Hence why I originally made this comment, because this AI art stole money from every artist who’s art was used to generate this image. That’s just how it works. This is a fundamental fact about it. Meanwhile human artists can exist in so many different ways without AI, we have hundreds of mediums and every culture developed their own styles completely independently, there’s simply no comparison to be made about human artists and AI. Whatever similarities you think you see are the result of the unpaid labour of human artists. This wouldn’t be an issue if every artist was being paid for the use of their artwork per each generation AND if AI was properly regulated, as in couldn’t be sold, because it really shouldn’t be sold at all unless every single artist used and abused by these generators got paid. AI art isn’t free for us, it comes with a cost to the artists meanwhile those who use AI are benefiting by saving money or even making it by selling OUR WORK. If that’s still not clear enough I can keep going, but I’ll probably just refer you to another artist who actually goes into detail about it because I don’t have the time to type all of this.

[@Abbanellie]

Hey ​@poisonthedragon I know this person ignored your response but I want you to know your time writing thst didn't go to waste! I got a good perspective of the AI image debate :)

[@jasonwood3405]

I haven't even made it through this video yet but I just have to say that, Clint, the focus on taxonomy, phylogeny & cladistics just makes my heart happy. The relationships, the categories, the relationships between categories.... I'm not even a biologist. I'm a chef and I immediately think of the Solanaceae. Is it a pepper, a potato, a tomato, an eggplant, nightshade? I digress. Your YT channel is great & I love your excitement about learning & disseminating info. People ARE monkeys!!

[@Lazy_Fish_Keeper]

Being allergic to nightshade, I appreciate your recognition of the diversity of the family! It was a shock when I learned goji berries also have whatever I am allergic to in the nightshade family when I ate some yogurt....

[@bowantoia8536]

Love this series, thank you.

[@alayairene9842]

love these videos. taxonomy blows my mind, and I appreciate your humor and attention to detail, like getting into etymology and unique adaptations. so cool.

[@alayairene9842]

forgot 2 mention my all time favorite, convergent evolution.

[@albertonykus]

The phylogeny here is very well presented. I appreciate the treatment of the base of Telluraves as a four-way polytomy. I'm with you also that coraciiforms are amazing! Rainbow-colored, burrowing, predatory dinosaurs don't seem like a thing that would exist, but there they are. You might be interested in a recent paper led by researchers from the The Peregrine Fund that proposed an updated definition of "raptor" with a phylogenetic component. Following the implication that the last common of Telluraves was likely a raptorial bird, they suggested that raptors should be defined as members of Telluraves that _retain_ the ancestral habit of feeding primarily on vertebrates. Under this definition, raptors include vultures, hawks, owls, and falcons, and notably also seriemas and terror birds, but excludes non-telluravians with raptor-like features (like skuas) or telluravians that secondarily reverted to being major vertebrate predators (like shrikes). Of course "raptors" in this sense still aren't a clade, but a specific ecomorphological category within Telluraves. McClure, C.J.W., S.E. Schulwitz, D.L. Anderson, B.W. Robinson, E.K. Mojica, J.-F. Therrien, M.D. Oleyar, and J. Johnson. 2019. Defining raptors and birds of prey. Journal of Raptor Research 53: 419-430. doi: 10.3356/0892-1016-53.4.419 A lot has been written in both popular and scientific literature about supposed shock-absorbing qualities of woodpecker skulls, but recent empirical research examining high-speed video footage of woodpeckers suggests that they may not have any such mechanism at all. Although counterintuitive, it makes sense from a physical perspective: due to Newton's 3rd law, woodpeckers would ironically have to peck even harder and expose themselves to even higher forces than they already do if they were dampening the shock from their own blows. Instead, probably the main reason they avoid serious injury from pecking is simply that they are much smaller than us, so it would require much higher acceleration for their brains to experience highly damaging forces compared to ours. Van Wassenbergh, S., E.J. Ortlieb, M. Mielke, C. Böhmer, R.E. Shadwick, and A. Abourachid. 2022. Woodpeckers minimize cranial absorption of shocks. Current Biology 32: 3189-3194. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.05.052 The name Australaves comes from the idea that this clade originated in the Southern Hemisphere, even though they are found globally today. Seriemas are only found in the Southern Hemisphere, and within modern falcons, parrots, and passerines the deepest divergences all appear to have taken place in the south as well. There is always some risk to relying only on modern species for inferring biogeographic history, especially for a group like birds, which are very good at getting around (mousebirds for example are only found in Africa today, but their fossil record shows that they were once very diverse in North America and Europe). For the Australaves though, this hypothesis has so far held up reasonably well.

[@_shadow_1]

When someone asks what my favorite dinosaur is, my answer is modern avian dinosaurs (birds). They have still managed to be one of the most successful, diverse, and intelligent groups of dinosaurs on the planet.

[@jimroberts3009]

I agree but many people still don't know that. A lot of people are surprised when I say I have dinosaurs in my garden and I tell them that my chickens are dinosaurs.

[@_shadow_1]

@@jimroberts3009 It gives dino nuggets a whole new meaning. We can also say that at least one dinosaur tastes like chicken.

[@JFDCamara]

Not only that but dinosaurs still outnumber mammals or lepidosaurians in number of living species. We still live in a dinosaur world even if they lost most of the major niches. Birds are so successful they were able to completely dominate the few (compared to other dinosaurs) niches they occupy.

[@_shadow_1]

@JFDCamara We're fortunate that birds having the ability to fly is so advantageous to them that avian dinosaurs simply have not yet had enough pressure to evolve back into the niches their ancestors once occupied. However, the extensive reduction of megafauna biodiversity due to human activity could be a sufficient catalyst for birds to eventually return to land and potentially start a new dinosaur epoch.

[@cj719521]

Quetzal! Love to see it! I wish we could normalize emphasis on the second syllable, though, more similar to the way most say it in Guate. kets-ALL. Rad video as always!

[@ThKiwi]

Vultures are my favorite animal on earth, and a video on them would make me ecstatic! ❤❤ This was a fun one!

[@omnomitsdom4756]

Clint laughing at his own jokes in the bloopers is the most wholesome thing I have stumbled across on the internet.

[@commander.saavik]

Show me the birds! And all the other phylogenies. I love your phylogeny vids!

[@jasonirelan-ig5fl]

You can probably stream the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds.

[@ibacache6555]

This video has been the single most potent nergasm in my life, thank you

[@sw4653]

Is there a possibility of getting more larger bird species videos? Especially species that are more rare, like harpy eagles, or for ones that are surrounded by stigma but incredibly important to ecosystems like vultures. These guys are absolutely awesome and deserve some love! You are awesome, Clint! Steve Irwin would be proud!

[@kasenchristy90]

From my research on the origins of coliiformes, it seems like it may come from a greek term kolios used to describe a type of woodpecker in Aristotles "History of Animals" that was then translated to colius in latin which becomes the base of coliiformes.

[@kasenchristy90]

It seems like kolios might also refer to a sheath which could possibly relate to the green woodpeckers beak? This I'm not very sure about but an interesting thing to add nonetheless.

[@zramirez5471]

Wow that was way better than what my search yielded - I chased the Latin side

[@Eidolon1andOnly]

​@@squidward5110Yes. Likely the video was available to channel members or patrons before being released to the general public, hence the apparent time discrepancy between when the video seems to have been released and when some people commented.

[@fredericlaurens4332]

but yes bottomline is they are named Coliiformes because of the Colius genus, which was named like that in the 18th century without clear explanation from the namegiver

[@kasenchristy90]

@@fredericlaurens4332 yes but I think that it could be the explanation for the name

[@KAZVorpal]

When you do the video about owls, mention that they aren't actually shaped as they seem. If you find a pic of a naked (featherless) owl, they actually look like a normal bird in body shape. They have a long, skinny neck, a long beak, et cetera. But their feathers make them LOOK like they have short necks and beaks. This is also why they seem to have such bizarre neck-turning ability: They SEEM to have short necks that rotate like they're possessed, but actually have very long necks that can reasonably turn all the way around. Of course they also have amazing head-motion control, to help them target prey audibly, so that they can rotate their head on a single axis, which most birds cannot.

[@jordanbabcock9349]

They have amazing "head motion control" for their vision

[@KAZVorpal]

@@jordanbabcock9349 No, it's more for their hearing. Their vision is their secondary hunting sense. Their ability to rotate or slide their head lets them quickly determine where a sound is coming from with precision. It's not nearly as important to steady their head for their binocular vision.

[@Sergio1Rodrigues]

Is nice to see how so very happy this man is talking about his stuff

[@feraldelight]

Such a great video!!!

[@polyMATHY_Luke]

Yes! One of my favorite channels about to drop some more knowledge. 🦅 SHOW ME THE BIRDS!

[@erichtomanek4739]

"And I ran, I ran so far away." Seagulls can run, but a Flock of Seagulls prefers to fly away, or sing great 80's songs.

[@farkasmactavish]

STOP IT NOW

[@YochevedDesigns]

I love watching you crack yourself up! 😂😂😂

[@codyratcliff5981]

You give me so many Bill Nye vibes, I love it! Your videos make learning about animals and the world so much fun.

[@Hi_Im_Akward]

I've been saying the same thing! He has made me really excited to learn about this stuff and he is so damn funny and enthusiastic

[@aji_jacobson]

Is it just late at night and I'm getting delirious, or would that jumpcut of Clint with the quote "If you don't like kingfishers we can't be friends, or you're a small fish" make an absolutely excellent shirt?

[@stephenmaher4690]

I might be alone in this- but I'd greatly prefer using stock images in editing rather than ai generated images. This is considering the legal and ethical gray area that generative AI is in. Although not everyone sees it as a gray area, I hope you all are thinking critically about whether using it adds to the video substantially or not. Thank you for all the great videos!

[@Purplesquigglystripe]

Ai images can also be inaccurate! I do see a lot of ai images on stock sites these days too though

[@scottofcanes]

You do realize that unless you personally took an image, you don't own it in a legal sense, right? Specifically, the copyright of that image. Using real images that you find online randomly risks copyright problems, even if it hasn't been pushed to any extreme as of yet (as far as I know). Using AI to make new images, based on other images, removes that problem as the resulting image should be sufficiently and/or legally different.

[@AngelC4K3]

​@@scottofcanesAi is more of a patchwork of images, edited and put together to "work". It's why using art as a reference is fine, but directly tracing and calling it your own is not. Ai is basically tracing a bunch of images, piecing it together, and calling it art. Art is made from experiences, from life. Ai is not art.

[@scottofcanes]

@@AngelC4K3 Not a single person in this chain of comments called it art or even mentioned art. My comment was not about whether or not AI generated images can be realistically considered art, or not.

[@mintakamothkind]

I find that it's a bit gratuitous in this video, for almost all the instances I'm seeing it probably would have been just as easy to simply get a royalty free stock image. For the instances where that wouldn't have worked, photoshop would have easily been applicable (though I understand typing a prompt into an algorithm is easier and faster). Personally I think AI images are gross to look at, there is usually something unnatural about them depending what model you're using. Real stock photos tend to be far less off-putting. I definitely hope they don't make a habit of this.

[@shelleymeyer4933]

Great job, love your style

[@ambermorrill8411]

That moth is ADORABLE.

[@TheFoxInABox]

As soon as you said the word “Thermals”, my Animorphs book series memories unlocked from somewhere deep within the recesses of my brain.

[@MereQat]

7:59 I specifically scrolled this comment section to find the other Animorphs reps when I heard the word "thermals." I was going to have to do it myself if you didn't ;)

[@kathrynjones1367]

Animorphs fan checking in. Gotta ride the thermals 🦅 Shameless plug, check out the graphic novels that were recently released. Books 1-4 are out, 5 is coming in fall.

[@JonathanAwesomepants]

​@@MereQatSame. Great series.

[@ohrats731]

The bird name that I most relate to is the short-legged ground roller ☺️😂

[@LukeMcGuireoides]

Brilliant writing.

[@danaemassie]

I can’t like this video enough!! ❤❤❤

[@KAZVorpal]

Your explanation of vulture circling behavior leaves out the main reason: Vultures circle carcasses to attract other vultures. This has a greater evolutionary benefit than getting higher to see farther away, because if there are enough of you then you can drive away ground scavengers, and even ones they can't drive away are less likely to kill an individual vulture, through the confusion effect. Of course rising to see farther is a benefit, but it's secondary, and probably wouldn't even be worthwhile by itself, versus getting to the food sooner to eat.

[@smelltheglove2038]

I thought the main reason was to stay in rising thermal air column, since it’s like an upside down tornado. It’s the air column that attracts the other buzzards. They usually congregate in, for a lack of a better word flocks, early in the morning to warm up. They tend to stick in these groups throughout the day. Living in the country, I’d spend hours watching their behaviors. I wish I could post pictures here, they’d line up along the fence near my house in the dozens in the morning, wings spread, and around 9am they’d take off.

[@matthewfurlani8647]

nah bro, its riding thermals. the most important thing. you're overthinking it

[@smelltheglove2038]

@@matthewfurlani8647 I don’t think it’s over thinking, more like just making things up.

[@KAZVorpal]

@@matthewfurlani8647 No, this is basic predator confusion behavior. Think of vultures covering a carcass en masse, and predators trying to chase them away, but being befuddled by the number of birds, or even daunted.

[@KAZVorpal]

@@smelltheglove2038We're talking specifically about them circling a carcass, not them circling in general. Obviously, they ALSO circle to ride thermals, but when they're circling a carcass it's not because they want to get really high up, per se, but to signal other vultures and accumulate a safer group.

[@bubbajenkins123]

Coloofornes comes from the Greek κολιός (koliós) which is a type of woodpecker. So it is woodpecker-form

[@kickerwhitelion7626]

According to Merriem Webster it comes from the latin Colius which seems to mean testicle or courage and I am starting to hate etymology because there isn't a clear answer. Edit: and according to Polish Wikipedia the word Colius is derived from κολοιος but that apparently refers to Western Jackdaw.

[@frittfoxx3488]

Kolios means Sheath or Scabbard, so for woodpeckers it's for sheathing their beaks in wood to collect insects, but these guys could also be sheathing themselves in leaves as they're named Mousebirds for how they scurry in and out of leaf cover.

[@frittfoxx3488]

But the newer Greek Kolios is slang for vagina as well, so they're also Vagina Form Birds. Just thought I'd add that.

[@chickadeestevenson5440]

@@frittfoxx3488 Coli seems to mean cultivate and the do eat seeds

[@frittfoxx3488]

@@chickadeestevenson5440 From which language? Just curious, I'm going off Old Greek

[@bradleyheimann678]

I was a docent at the Cascades Raptor Center in Eugene, Oregon for a while (which I highly recommend visiting) and seeing these birds up close is awe inspiring.

[@gabe20244]

I love all of these reptiles

[@enscroggs]

10:31 That first photo shows a buzzard (buzzards aren't vultures, btw). Clint's quick overview of the Accipitridae, left out the genus Accipiter, the true hawks.

[@matyaskassay4346]

Hawk is a widely used name, just like raptor. It's also used for many species of buzzard, like the red-tailed hawks shown here.

[@Barakon]

7:17 vultures show other vultures where the hot currents are, they confuse away other scavengers, they see better form a high vantage point. That is why they encircle.

[@jrodowens]

What about displaced or otherwise non-dominant birds circling a known carcass waiting for a feeding opportunity?

[@pendlera2959]

I wonder if part of it is they know they could be attacked by other predators if they land alone, but a group of vultures is intimidating to predators. So circling is to draw a crowd. There might even have been strong selection pressure for that at one point: predators that hung out around old carcasses to catch fresh vultures? It doesn't make complete sense to me, though, because most predators are willing to scavenge, and new carcasses are a lot more common than old ones. Just thinking out loud.

[@anthonybeers]

I loved living in Zambia, so many beautiful birds.

[@MaryAnnNytowl]

"Grabby birds" just makes me smile! 😁 My favorite grabby bird type is the owl - all of the Strigiformes, in fact. Great grabby birds, there!

[@alfredgimeno7227]

Your energy is enchanting and paired with the oh, so funny things you throw into the mix (“hagfish of birds, Catholic birds”) I can’t help but to try my hardest to glean whatever information I can from your talks. So entertaining and fun! 👍🏼

[@ginatruiolo]

Grabby-foot murder birds..... 😂 I love this sooo much.... Show me the birds. I love how you threw Dav Kaufman into the parrot clade.

[@quetzalpatlsalmu6442]

hey clint, i love your content, your style making them and, of course, the subjects you are covering! I´m a big bird- , reptile and dinosaur-enthusiast. i´d love to see you guys would make a whole video about TERRORBIRDs. keep up with this amazing content of yours!

[@decius5503]

Id absolutely love to see an in-depth video on the corvids!

[@risel56]

Ah yes, my favorite mobile game: Grabby Bird

[@firesandflowers]

Yes! More birds! Definitely looking forward to corvids (bluejays are so misunderstood 💙). There's a Red Shouldered Hawk pair that nests in our backyard (a juvinile came and sat on our porch last year!) and I've been learning a lot about falcons, eagles, buzzards (or "hawks" as we call them in the US), etc... fascinating creatures!

[@jorgegonzalez-larramendi5491]

Thanks!

[@BiTurbo228]

Hoopooes are some of my favourite birds! I remember seeing one in France when I was young and have always remembered them. Plus, it's such a fun word to say 😂

[@therongjr]

Clint, you do not need to ask if I'm into that kind of thing. The answer is always YES!

[@cs4870]

Birds are so amazing I can’t decide which group is my favorite! They’re all so lovely!

[@taylortucker1513]

I live for these videos

[@ricardoludwig4787]

Big fan of new world vultures, I often got dragged to the countryside to see my grandparents and there I found their circles mesmerizing

[@ArjanKop]

I love the nerdiness. Reminds me of the wonderful years I spent at the natural history museums here. Keep ‘em going Clint 👍

[@conlon4332]

Would love to see more on Vultures, Owls, Corvids, and Shrikes.

[@Halfie4tailed]

I love the phrase “grabby birds” Just so silly!

[@GingerBread1004]

Yes to the bird video!!!!!

[@marizuokereke7347]

I love your videos. They are so informative and your enthusiasm is contagious!

[@linzerj9904]

Show me those BIRDS!!!! I love these videos, I learn so much every time!

[@dwightmansburden7722]

I absolutely love the educational content you provide, including the physics lessons. (As a pilot, I can testify that on a sunny, warm day you can absolutely feel updrafts.) PS- show me the birds!