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The Poisonous Bird You've Probably Never Heard Of

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Most birds are harmless.

This one is poisonous.

In this minisode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into one of the strangest birds on Earth: the pitohui, a brightly colored songbird from New Guinea that carries powerful neurotoxins in its skin and feathers. 

The toxin is chemically similar to the same compounds found in some poison dart frogs, making the pitohui one of the very few known poisonous birds in the world. But how does a bird become poisonous in the first place?

🐦 What a pitohui actually looks like

☠️ How this bird stores toxins in its…

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