6

Talking Birds Are Teaching Each Other to Swear

Probably the only thing you know about parrots and cockatoos is that they can talk. Or, more specifically, that they can mimic human speech. Now, unless they're shockingly gifted, they don't understand a word they're saying. But a 4-year-old doesn't know what the word "poontang" means, either, and that doesn't stop him from repeating it and getting all of the other preschoolers saying it. We're finding out that birds kind of do the same thing.

After all, the pets that are raised among humans and learn (or learn to imitate) dozens of words sometimes either escape or are released into the wild. Now, because birds in the wild have no need for human language, you'd think they'd stop using it once they managed to get loose. But you would be wrong. They keep using what they learned and, more importantly, teach it to other birds.

That's why people around Sydney, Melbourne and other big cities in Australia have found wild cockatoos using English phrases. Now ask yourself: If you had a bird that repeated whatever you said, what's the first thing you'd do? You'd start teaching it some goddamned swear words, that's what. Well, they do that in Australia, too. So, sometimes the birds have been heard cursing at people.

Now imagine how crazy you'd think you were going if one day you were walking through the woods and you suddenly heard a disembodied bird voice tell you to eat a dick.

5

Fish Are Taking Antidepressants

Sewage treatment plants around the world are designed to treat water for the obvious threats: biological contaminants, microorganisms and the general remnants of a Taco Bell fourth meal. This process ensures that we aren't pumping out gallons of pure feces and unraveled condoms into our oceans and streams.

But while waste management systems never underestimated the gross oddities humans could expel from their bodies, they didn't anticipate the medicated bliss everyone would be feeling while doing it. What we're trying to say is that millions of people are taking antidepressants, and some of those leftover chemicals pass out of your body when you urinate. When you flush, the water eventually makes its way to a river.

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Prozac. Harvested from only the purest mountain streams.

4

We're Making Chimps Smarter

3

Toxic Waste Is Turning Birds Gay

The ibis bird lives in marshes, which as you can guess are areas characterized by massive amounts of freestanding water. Unfortunately, a lot of that water is polluted with toxic runoff from mines and burning coal, which includes chemicals like mercury. We've known for a long time the dangers for the development of wildlife when they are exposed to large amounts of mercury, but then came a twist no one saw coming.

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"Surpriiiiise!"

While scientists were concerning themselves with the effect of mercury on local fish populations, they noticed a startling number of male birds in the same habitat boning each other.

Seeing as the latter was far more interesting, they did an experiment. They subjected a group of ibis birds to the same amount of mercury they would ordinarily get from their diet in the wetlands, and they found that the more mercury a male bird ingested, the more likely he was to pair with another male. This turned out to be because mercury caused testosterone levels to plummet.

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"Pfft. The only mercury we're concerned with is of the Freddie variety."

2

Mice Are Getting Fatter

Obesity is a serious problem for humanity, with over 1 billion people globally trundling around under the weight of their own bodies as their insides churn food into Crisco. Yet aside from lazy, overstuffed house pets and livestock, we never really see fat animals. There are no winded, pudgy cheetahs that have to break for a breather and a soda before they get back to sprinting across the savannah.

However, recent studies show there's at least one animal in the wild that is starting to get fatter, and the problem isn't diet, it's us.

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"It turns out we humans are the true animals, Mr. Cheesington."

Well, it's air pollution to be exact. Researchers have found that mice and rats turn into tiny pie wagons just by gulping in the average amount of particulate pollution from an urban environment. In controlled tests, two sets of young mice were given the same diet, and the only difference was that one set was exposed to increased levels of air pollution. By the simple virtue of being exposed to the equivalent of "city air," mice experience increased fat buildup and increased blood sugar levels. Both sets of mice were fed healthy diets, so this test doesn't even account for all the Cheez Whiz and unfinished doughnuts mice are inevitably scrounging in urban settings.

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"Got any Doritos?"

1

Animals Are Getting Sexually Frustrated

Take a minute right now to stop and listen to everything around you. Chances are you will hear cars, a plane, maybe some music, people talking and at the very least the hum of your computer. The point is, you are almost always surrounded by man-made noise. We're just noisy creatures, and our technology has only amplified the problem. While most of us have gotten used to it, or even come to enjoy it, we're certainly not the only ones who have to listen to it.

For animals, we are the worst goddamn neighbors in the world. Aside from the light pollution and the very literal pollution that we're responsible for, we're also indirectly keeping animals from having sex with each other.

Cockblock!

From bats, frogs and owls to dolphins and crabs, we're messing up their lives with all our noise. And for animals with mating calls (like frogs and birds), we are ruining their love lives. The main problem is that they just can't hear each other.

In the case of tree frogs, the male's mating calls can't compete with traffic noise. Environmentalists are so worried about it that they expect to see huge dips in population. With birds, the noise is causing them to leave cities in droves in favor of somewhere they can actually attract a mate.

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Or at the very least a place where they can pay for it.

Some birds, however, have decided to stick it out and are forcing themselves to sing even louder. Nightingales in Berlin, for instance, have started singing at decibel levels equal to a motorcycle. Birds have actually made themselves hoarse doing it, which has researchers worried that this will lead to either birds leaving cities altogether or the evolution of a race of birds with supervoices.

Now think back to the entry about the cursing birds and imagine a future where the trees all scream slurs at us at a volume louder than a jackhammer.

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It would basically be like playing at any New York sporting event.

Kathy helped write a charity book, which you can buy here. Karl didn't help write that book, but he did write all this, and he's also on Facebook.