I watched an awesome DVD about animals in Australia called the Magical Land of OZ (it has an adorable peacock spider on the cover) and learned something brand new. I enjoy plenty of documentaries, so I’m used to knowing a little about a lot of topics. But this surprised me. I felt like I was watching The Jungle Book, not real animals.
What was this mind-blowing video?
It showed Aboriginals doing a controlled burn in the savanna of Northern Australia. As they burned the grasses, small animals and insects escaped. Overhead, black kites circled to catch them. That seemed pretty normal bird behavior. But one black kite picked up a branch that was burning at one end. The bird flew to an area that was not on fire yet and drops the branch. The new grassland began to burn, not because of humans, but because a bird figured out that fire was a guaranteed way to get a meal.
I know that plenty of animals make and use tools and that birds, like crows and ravens, are problem-solving smart. But I hadn’t heard of any animal besides us that used fire. I was quite impressed.
The way the video portrayed it, the birds learned this behavior from watching the humans, but fire has been part of the Australian savanna for thousands or even tens of thousands of years. So the birds might have known about the advantages of fire long before humans demonstrated it.
Now I feel like I’m watching The Jungle Book. Mind-blowing.
Cool