they're my favorite bird full stop
i'm absolutely enthralled by them
they are an amazing creature nothing
like it in the animal world
and i have to admit i'm not meant to
admit this is a zoologist but i
they're very human-like and i find that
makes them all the more fascinating to
me
he will craft his own drumstick he'll
snip off the branch
and he'll whittle it down strip all off
all the bark
and then he'll grasp it in his foot and
he'll bang on the side of the tree
hollow
and he does it in a way that's really
quite rhythmic
it's very unusual in the in the bird
world or in the animal world because
most of the time
when animals make tools it's for the
purposes of foraging they're finding
things to eat this is the only case that
we know of where a tool is made for the
purposes
of a sexual display
the population we were studying has an
extraordinarily low
rate of reproduction it's the slowest we
know of in the bird world
the females only lay one egg
in their clutch every two years at most
that's normal that's natural but
we found that that one egg had a very
high chance of not making it
so the predators were coming in and
either killing it at the egg stage or
the chick stage
and on average it was taking each female
10 years to produce one young
[Music]
the point of our paper was to sound the
alarm bells and to say that this
magnificent creature in our northern
rainforest
is in fact in peril and the numbers are
going down very very quickly
[Applause]
they're very important for the ecosystem
they disperse the rainforest seeds they
have these massive great beaks
and they're the only creatures that can
break into some of the larger seed pods
quite a remote area and people don't
know about it so i'd really love it if
people just knew what they had on their
own soil
and if more people could get up there
and see them and appreciate them
i'd be very very happy about that
you