Thanks to Joelle, Jacob, and Anna for their suggestions this week!
Further reading/watching:
Gulper Eel Balloons Its Massive Jaws
Watch rare footage of a shapeshifting eel with 'remarkably full tummy' swimming in the deep sea
The beautiful stellar jay:
The maybe not quite as beautiful but really awesome gulper eel (with its mouth full of water, image taken from first video linked above):
The same eel as above but with its mouth open so you can see just how big it is!
Show transcript:
Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw.
This week we’re going to learn about a bird suggested by Joelle, Jacob, and Anna, and a weird fish also suggested by Jacob.
Let’s start with the bird, the stellar jay, also called Steller’s jay! In the last few years there has been a push among bird enthusiasts to change the common names of birds named after people to names that are more general. While Steller’s jay hasn’t officially been renamed to the stellar jay, a lot of people are calling it that already so that’s what we’ll call it here. The word stellar means outstanding, and that’s definitely a good description of this bird.
The stellar jay is a beautiful bird that lives in western North America down into parts of Central America. It’s closely related to the blue jay found in eastern North America, and if you saw it from the middle down you might think it was a blue jay, except that it doesn’t have white markings on its tail and wings. It has a blue tail and wing feathers with dark bars, but from about the shoulders up it looks very different from the blue jay. It’s silvery-gray, brownish, or black on its head, neck, and back. Some populations have a white eyebrow marking that makes the bird look like it’s frowning. It has a crest like the blue jay, but its crest is bigger, spikier like it hasn’t brushed its hair yet, and the bird itself is bigger overall than its eastern cousin.
The stellar jay lives in forests, especially coniferous forests, where it eats pretty much anything it can find. It’s an omnivore that likes insects and other invertebrates, eggs and baby birds of other species, and even small animals like lizards and mice, but it also eats lots of nuts, berries, seeds, and other plant material. It will visit bird feeders, and especially likes sunflower seeds and raw peanuts.
The stellar jay is a corvid, distantly related to crows and magpies, and it shares the corvid trait of being intelligent, sometimes aggressive, and loud. It will imitate hawks in order to scare other birds away from food, and it will often chase smaller birds away from feeders. During nesting season, the birds get a lot quieter, and the male will sneak his way to and from the nest to feed his mate while she’s sitting on the eggs. The stellar jay prefers to build its nest in a conifer, either in a hollow in the trunk or on branches close to the trunk.
This is what the stellar jay sounds like:
[bird calls]
Jacob also suggested we learn about the gulper eel, which is sort of the opposite of the stellar jay. It’s a deep-sea fish with a lot of names, including pelican eel and my favorite, the umbrella-mouth. It’s black or sometimes dark brown and can grow up to about three feet long, or 90 cm. Much of its length consists of a long, whip-like tail.
The gulper eel’s mouth is ENORMOUS, ridiculously enormous, especially considering how slender the rest of the fish is. Its lower jaw is hinged and is extremely long, with a stretchy pouch of skin that forms its mouth and I guess you can call them chee...
