Flutterbird

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Flutterbirds are a group of birds invented for the television program The Future is Wild. They inhabit the tropical rainforests that cover Antarctica 100 million years in the future. The flutterbirds are descendants of the petrel birds which changed their evolutionary adaptation from cold sea fishing to life in tropical rainforest. They keep their petrel ancestors' tubular nostrils. With few invaders from elsewhere, the flutterbirds filled the roles that many birds typically occupy elsewhere. Some became gliders through the canopy. Some, like the roachcutter, hover through the forest understory. The roachcutter is an unusual bird because of its flight speed, skills at snatching insects from branches, and how its eyes are positioned on swivel-like turrets. All flutterbirds fear the falconfly, a giant predatory wasp. Some flutterbirds combat these giant predatory insects. The spitfire bird is a flutterbird that uses chemical warfare against attackers. It collects two highly-reactive chemicals from the flowers of a rainforest tree called the spitfire tree, whose male flowers make one of these chemicals and female flowers the other. These chemicals are stored in the bird's crop and react within the bird's nose. This reaction creates a hot acid spray that can repel any attacker. The spitfire bird displays its deadly cargo with bright orange and yellow plumage.

The false spitfire bird is a flutterbird that imitates the spitfire bird in behavior and color to deceive predators.