“…And today we’re talking about a dastardly death–hunter, but more on that later.”
The African savannah is a place where many fall to powerful predators and environmental challenges. While the dangers are many, the continent has an undertaker ready to go to work. The Marabou stork is a sinister looking bird that wears a black cloak of wings. Where disaster strikes it is soon to follow. In nature, a bust can be a boon if you know how to make the most of Life, Death, and Taxonomy.
Description
- As with most carrion birds, this thing is ugly as sin. Though Julia would say otherwise since all of God’s creatures are beautiful.
- The stork is a massive bird with black wings, a white chest, and very long, white legs
- Its head is where the party’s at. The marabou beach party.
- It has a long yellowish or pinkish neck with a head that looks like it’s been in several ovens.
- Its neck and head are mostly featherless, so its bubbly, blotchy, black and red skin is out there for the world to see
- Its beak is a long-sharp cream-colored spear covered with patches, scratches, and hatches all over it.
- There’s also a meaty bright-red tumor nestled on the back of its neck.
- Its most prominent feature is a large bulbous pink wattle that hangs down in front of its neck like a long, saggy, sadness balloon.
- I don’t want to look at it anymore – it makes me uncomfortable. It’s the Freddy Kruger of storks.
- This seems like the kind of stork that would deliver bags of snakes instead of swaddled babies.
Measure Up
Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at Gmail dot com. We don’t have a new Measure Up intro!
Height
- 152 centimeters (4.99 feet)
- How many storks go into the distance between Kampala, Uganda and Queen Elizabeth National Park by road?
- Hint: Queen Elizabeth National Park spans four Ugandan districts. It’s home to Africa’s greatest hits like hyena, chimpanzee, lion, hippos, waterbuck, and buffalo.
- 264,529 storks. The park is 400 kilometers (250 mi) away from Kampala.
Weight
- 9 kg (20 lb)
- How many storks go into the largest elephant ever on record?
- Hint: The largest elephant on record was an adult male savannah elephant and it was found in Angola.
- 1,200 storks. The largest elephant was 24,000 lb (11,000 kg).
Fast Facts
- Range: Lives in most of sub-Saharan Africa except for the Kalahari and South Africa
- Diet: Mainly eats dead animals like a vulture, but they switch over to mostly live prey during mating season so they can feed fresh food to their young.
- Behavior:
- They live for 25 years in the wild since they don’t have many natural enemies except for lions occasionally
- It uses its neck sack to make a variety of courtship noises to complement their bill-rattling displays
- In Africa’s dry season, it lays two to three eggs in its arboreal nest, which hatch in about a month.
Major Fact: Enter the Undertaker
The Marabou stork is called the undertaker for many reasons, and for many animals of the savannah, its presence is like an ill omen.
Marabou storks are more like vultures in their eating habits. They prefer carrion and they are able to consume rotting flesh, just like a vulture. Their rough looking appearance is also due to their featherless head, which allows them to eat rotting meat without it getting stuck in their feathers.
Unlike many vultures, the Marabou stork isn’t above eating live prey like other storks. They may eat fish, frogs, insects, eggs, small mammals and reptiles, other birds, and pretty much anything that will fit down its throat.
These storks share traits with the vulture we’ve covered in the past, but they also share traits with the black kite, in that they are attracted to fires. Brush fires flush small prey out of their hiding places and make for easy pickings for the Undertaker.
The Marabou stork delights in the disaster, but I didn’t find reports that they actually set fires like the black kite. However, there’s another sinister fact about this shade of the savannah.
If you survive the fire, the marabou beak, there’s another threat on the horizon: BEES.
Bees and marabou storks have a relationship in nature that is referred to as commensalism, which is something we specifically talked about not knowing the name for in the past.
Commensalism is when one animal benefits from another, and does no harm or good in return. So they aren’t parasitic or symbiotic. The bees will follow the stork to its meal and then lay eggs in what is left of the carcass.
The carcass makes for good eating when the bee larvae hatch.
So, when Samson ripped a lion like a goat in the Bible and came back to find a beehive in the carcass, I wondered if there was a stork there while he was away.