In a previous video we talked about taxonomy, or how to arrange animals into groups.
This time, we're talking about one of the interesting effects of taxonomy.
What do you do if an animal is SO different from other animals that it doesn't fit into
ANY group?
We're talking about "orphan species".
Quick recap: modern taxonomy is about figuring out the family tree that shows how animals
are related.
We look at DNA and body shape to figure out which animals are close relatives and put
them into groups.
Let's look at one group - reptiles.
We start way back on the family tree with the great, great, great, great, 8 billion
greats grandparents of modern reptiles.
These are scaly, cold-blooded, they lay eggs, and they have a LOT of descendants.
Some of their descendants are crocodiles, some are turtles, and some are lizards.
Some of those reptiles were Triceratops.
Cool-looking reptiles!
But every single Triceratops went extinct.
There's none left in the world, they have no descendants.
But imagine a world where one group of Triceratops survived.
We would suddenly have a species with NO close relatives anywhere in the world.
They have different bodies and different genes than any other living animal.
So Triceratops would be a super-interesting animal to study, because they would have unique
bodies and behaviors.
Now here's the amazing thing: we have species like this in the world.
Actually, a LOT of them.
When we look at them, we realize that we have something special and unique.
There are scientists trying every day to find these orphaned species.
They look at a group of animals, comparing their DNA, lifestyle, and body shape.
This can get REALLY precise.
For example, in 2008 some scientists were studying bird DNA - they compared DNA from
a Waxwing to a database of other bird DNA.
They found a surprise cousin species in this database.
The cousin is the Yellow-flanked Whistler.
The Yellow-flanked Whistler was already in a bird family, but now that we're looking
closely at its DNA, it's not like any of its close relatives.
It's also not exactly part of any other bird family either.
So some scientists want to put it in its own family, which means it may have been an orphan
species all along.
A final decision may be made soon.
Here are some examples of bird species that we know.
The Hoatzin.
This is the last surviving species out of a group of seven bird species.
All the others went extinct a long, long time ago, like we know they existed because we
found fossils.
These birds eat leaves, which is rare among birds, and they ferment leaves in a unique
throat pouch.
No other bird does this.
They also have wing claws!
How cool is that?
Other orphan species are Shoebills, Limpkins, Secretary Birds, Oilbirds, and Sunbitterns.
It's more important than usual to protect orphan species because their genes, bodies,
and behavior are so different from other animals.
They don't have any relatives left, so if the species disappears they take the whole
groups' worth of secrets and surprises with them.
In my research I found 34 of these one-species bird families.
But we're still finding them among birds that we have already organized.
Maybe YOU will be the one to discover a secret species hiding in plain sight!
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