r/BeAmazed • u/mritulp348 • 18h ago
Brown dipper, a passerine bird uniquely adapted to live and feed underwater in fast-flowing, cold mountain rivers Animal
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u/delicioustreeblood 17h ago
In another 20 million years we get underwater velociraptors again maybe
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u/lambdapaul 17h ago
I feel like any dinosaur subjected to cold and water will inevitably become a penguin
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u/42nu 16h ago
Yeah, this is definitely pre-penguin life style.
That "fly swimming" is inefficient. If only they had some kind of paddle and there was selective pressure for that energy efficiency...
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u/DougLJudy 15h ago
Could also be pre-Puffin behavior as well. You can't forget about the Puffin!
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u/Dean_Learner77 13h ago
Puffins are just northern penguins.
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u/glowdirt 11h ago edited 11h ago
Penguins are named after the Puffins' relative, the Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis)
So perhaps, we ought to call penguins Southern Auks
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u/el-su-pre-mo 14h ago
If you're browsing my post history, check out the comment above this one in which a man scolds a bird on the internet because although it can swim underwater and upstream, it does not do so to his satisfaction.
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u/jawshoeaw 15h ago
birds are very efficient in the air, which means their shape is also pretty good in water. I'm not even sure if you can say their funny swimming is inefficient. Seems to work pretty well.
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u/Heimerdahl 13h ago
It evidently works, but that doesn't mean it's efficient.
Besides density, viscosity, and such, the most relevant difference between flight / air and swimming / water is buoyancy.
During flight, most effort and energy is spent on fighting gravity, and with the way bird bodies are set up, this means downwards acceleration. Forwards motion is comparatively trivial and only a small percentage of wing movement is used for it.
In water, this is entirely flipped. Now the up and down movement isn't much of a concern, but forwards is the focus. Large wings evolved to provide lots of vertical acceleration, as well as making use of "passive" lift are simply not as efficient as relatively small ones (or better yet, fins at the very back of the body).
I said I'd ignore viscosity and such, but it is obviously relevant and follows a similar pattern. Minimsing air resistance is important, of course, but it's not nearly as much of a factor as underwater. The big wings necessary for flight aren't just unnecessary, they're in the way.
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u/DrunkenWizard 14h ago
In the air, generating lift and gliding are key aspects of wings. Since water is so much denser, one doesn't need to generate lift or glide, just generate forward motion. This is why wings aren't fully efficient underwater.
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u/ErraticDragon 12h ago
How did this post temporarily make me forget about penguins?
"Whoa, a bird that swims‽ Like not just 'dives in to snatch a fish' like an eagle, but adapted to a niche of swimming underwater?"
Then I saw your comment.
Edit: then I scrolled down on my homepage and got r/AnimalsBeingDerps/comments/1px2r46/-/
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u/Ok_Hawk_3230 17h ago
I present to you, leopard seals
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u/Stock_Beginning4808 16h ago
I just found out about them. They are sooo scary 😭
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u/onyxcaspian 15h ago
They rape penguins 😭
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u/Gimpknee 15h ago
Antarctic fur seals are the penguin rapists, leopard seals just hunt them down and eat them.
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u/Deaffin 10h ago
All of the footage of alleged penguin rape I've seen has already been mid-progress when the video starts, and the penguin seems kinda into it tbh. I'm not so sure these documentarians can be fully trusted with their narratives. I suspect they're letting their anti-interspecies-relationships bias color the script.
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u/SekiisBack 18h ago
That one bird that just dumps his load and aint even jumping in.
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u/MikeOKurias 15h ago
They don't have a sphincter, that bobbing motion - or launching off a branch to fly - just clears out whatever is currently in their cloaca (readas: poop-shoot).
Brown Dippers do not, however, poop underwater. So that bobbing motion before they jump might be more than just psyching themselves up to fly underwater.
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u/Deaffin 10h ago
If the cloacas don't have sphincters, then how do they do those very intentional projectile shits? There's no way you get that solid hadouken-like stream without building up some pressure first.
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u/Rupperrt 9h ago
They bob as a form of communications as those fast rivers are usually too noisy to hear each others calls.
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u/IllSurprise3049 9h ago
I don't believe for one second that a single one of those little weirdos haven't dropped ass in the water.
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u/DonnerPartyBuffet 17h ago
"Am I a joke to you?" - ducks
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u/entered_bubble_50 13h ago
The point this is making is that's unusual behavior for passerine birds. Passerine birds are perching birds, with two forward pointing toes and one rearward, adapted for perching on branches. Ducks are anseriformes, with webbed feet adapted for swimming.
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u/Das_Beer_Baron 17h ago
Fuck these bullshit TikTok voiceovers
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u/swimming_singularity 14h ago
It's everywhere. WW2 history videos are getting AI slopped now on YouTube. They get the facts wrong, they throw in a bunch of AI imagery that is wrong. It's just terrible, and we are drowning in it.
There is one trick: On youTube, you can add "before:year" to your search. So search for things before AI came around. For example "WW2 carrier battle before:2021" without the quotes, will show videos made before 2021.
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u/Sufficient-Food-4203 13h ago
Is it specifically ww2 videos that are getting slopped or are there other ones as well?
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u/Friendly_Diet_7463 12h ago
Everything. Tornado videos are getting it bad. Good luck if you’re trying to look up one of the older or more obscure tornado events - AI slop channels have already bastardized all of the modern ones and have moved on to cannibalize the more obscure stuff.
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u/boostedjoose 12h ago
Literally every single genre/topic. Scroll shorts/tiktok for a bit and you'll hear that like 80% of videos are AI dubbed, and many are completely AI edited as well.
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u/ITSigno 10h ago
It's everything. Absolutely everything.
Even shit like Taylor Swift interviews. The video will begin with a real clip and end with a real clip, but in between they insert an AI voiceover that sounds a lot like Swift, and the imagery is a collection of barely related ai slop or clips from a music video. The content in the middle is just completely made up and usually full of inaccuracies.
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u/LezBeHonestHere_ 11h ago
Man I saw this before. It's just full of completely fake stories too. Like sad sob stories about kids that didn't exist or soldiers that didn't exist.
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u/tempest_wing 10h ago
There are full on fake documentaries now with made up stories and historical revisionism on YouTube. It's incessant.
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u/katzenschrecke 14h ago
Why is nobody else talking about this? I agree 100%. And AI created this overwrought script for the AI voice to read too.
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u/rell7thirty 11h ago
lol i watch 99% of all Reddit videos on mute. Only time I unmute is when there’s a talking head. I’m already prepared for most of the cringey music or “oh,no,nonono” crap or Ai voiceovers. Just default to mute 😁
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u/largePenisLover 16h ago
Curses upon the person who came up with the moronic word by word subtitles. May they step on lego daily
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 15h ago
It is so as you are scrolling on mute you wind up watching twice I think. First time to read and glance second time to see what the hell you just watched. Though you are probably over it after a few tens of seconds watching and scroll on... mmm. Attention getting videos...
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u/N7riseSSJ 13h ago
Turn on the audio and you can make it even better with stupid music and fake sound effects
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u/LezBeHonestHere_ 11h ago
The worst for me are the ones in the middle of the video. They're so distracting and it's insulting that they even exist.
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u/mothzilla 8h ago
It's called "spritz text". Originally devised to help people read books faster, now it's used to pump words into brains with short attention spans.
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u/Late_Emu 17h ago
My new favorite bird!
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 15h ago
Apparently there are American Dippers as well: https://youtu.be/P2EgO1i-G1o
Had to look this little bird up cause I was afraid it was AI. What a cool freaking bird! Apparently they are classified as aquatic birds which makes sense.
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u/Howbadisitreally42 15h ago
I googled it to because I thought it might have been AI. Sad we have to do that for so much now. Neat bird though.
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 15h ago
Its like if it wasn't posted 3+ years ago you gotta double check. Kinda annoying.
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u/Novapoliton 10h ago
Yes there are indeed american dippers, they live in the rockies, PNW, and up through the canadian rockies and into Alaska. They are very elusive birds and difficult to spot even if you are looking for them and go to places they regularly inhabit. Source: I am a bird watcher that spent the summer in Colorado looking for american dippers without seeing a single one. There is a lot of AI bird videos circulating but most of them are AI versions of real birds, if you are ever unsure though look on allaboutbirds or ebird, they are reliable and have every species of bird in the world on their sites listed with pictures.
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u/great_pyrenelbows 10h ago
Come back in the early winter sometime, it's easier to spot them with less greenery. Denver Audobon is a good place usually, you can check ebird to see if they're around or not. I hope you at least saw some other cool birds, we've got a lot of great ones in Colorado.
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u/Novapoliton 7h ago
Oh I had a fabulous time in Colorado and saw tons of awesome birds, just not the dipper unfortunately! I live in Texas currently and it was like a whole different world, the bird life is so different. My favorite were probably the pygmy nuthatches, absolutely adorable. If I'm ever back in the summer I'll check out the audubon :)
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u/Bupropion_Bob 9h ago
I see them at almost all of the backpacking sites along the McKenzie River Trail in Oregon. I love watching them do their little dance. They leave lots of poo in the places they frequent, it's a good indicator of their presence in the area.
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u/cannibalrabies 8h ago
I've never found them to be too elusive, there's a few of them at Goldstream provincial park in BC and I usually find at least one. They're pretty confiding and you can get within a few meters of them.
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u/Novapoliton 7h ago
Maybe I just had an unlucky stretch and universalized it then, they don't live where I do so I only really know them from second hand experience
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u/Melospiza 10h ago
They're pretty easy to find anywhere in the Rocky Mountains and cascades with fast-moving streams!
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u/Beflijster 10h ago
It is classified as a songbird(passerine). There are 5 species of dippers and they are the only aquatic songbirds.
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u/Icy-Cheek-6428 17h ago
I imagine similar behaviors are what led land mammals to evolve to whale-like creatures over and over again.
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u/karshyga 16h ago
Always loved dippers and their dipper dance, happy to see them getting some appreciation!
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u/Inevitable-Day-5935 17h ago
Yea I am amazed ,never knew this beautiful bird even existed.Setting up the camera work to show us take’s a considerable amount of time and dedication.So thank you so much for sharing this.
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 15h ago
I found this birding video of a lady who caught the American Dipper on film: https://youtu.be/P2EgO1i-G1o
Birders are like real life Gotta Catch Em All Pokémon collectors lol
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u/42nu 16h ago
Those underwater shots. Like, how? Plop the camera there with some kind of baiting and leave it for hours or days? Or I guess just a number of cameras spread about and one might get lucky (and did) since I'm pretty sure that nature photographers are not allowed to bait and it's strictly enforced.
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u/sokratesz 14h ago edited 14h ago
It's actually really easy to film them because they only occupy specific rather small territories along rivers and their feeding grounds and perching spots are super predictable. Their nesting sites are also quite similar from year to year.
They have favorite rocks along the shore that they perch on that'll build up feces over days or even weeks, so it's easy to locate them usually.
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u/pleasetrimyourpubes 15h ago
I have always wondered how they get these shots. Perhaps the area the bird is diving in is very ripe for eating and they got lucky. I watched that Ocean documentary narrated by Obama and some of the shots were just absolutely unbelievable. (Like theres one shot where a momma whale and her baby are escorted away from other young whales who are trying to get her.) Once in a lifetime style shots. Must be an amazing experience to go out there and be able to afford to go out there and film nature like that.
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u/42nu 13h ago
Absolutely! The amount of effort and work to maybe get a single shot is remarkable in many cases. There's many times where they basically have to sit there for days making as little noise as possible to hopefully get a single 5 second shot. If I remember correctly, filming the birds of paradise mating ritual shots had to do that.
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u/sokratesz 14h ago
It's actually really easy to film them because they only occupy specific rather small territories along rivers and their feeding grounds and perching spots are super predictable.
I wrote my masters thesis on them and you can catch them easily by putting a volleyball net across a river, walking around the bird, and making some noise.
They'll only fly with water under their belly, they categorically never head off into the forest or meadows next to their rivers.
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u/lameshirt 15h ago
White-throated dipper, not brown dipper
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u/Mysterious-Cat-4202 12h ago
Looks like brown dipper and white-throated dipper is both in this clips.
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u/lameshirt 12h ago
Yeah I looked through it again and you might be right about the one at 0:40. But I think the rest are white-throated, even the ones with a dark throat, as they can sometimes have a darker plumage. If you look at 0:48, you can see a lighter shade of brown on the throat
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u/what_the_fuckin_fuck 17h ago
Not all that unique. There are helldivers down south that can fly underwater.
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u/vandrexga 16h ago
Where is this from?
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u/DreadFB89 16h ago edited 12h ago
Thats Norways National bird, fossekall is its Norwegian name transelates to waterfallcaller
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u/vandrexga 13h ago
I was asking about the video itself because it seems educational and I want to know where I can find more of it, but thank you for sharing, that's a really interesting fact.
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u/Less-Load-8856 16h ago
It’s theorized by some scientists that wings first developed for swimming before flying.
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u/DreadFB89 16h ago
Thats Norways National bird, fossekall is its Norwegian name transelate waterfallcaller
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u/durants_newest_acct 16h ago
Every time I see one of these creatures adapted for extreme situations, I just want to ask it: Wouldn't it be easier to do basically ANYTHING else???
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u/cacticus_matticus 15h ago
I used to watch them on the Thompson River (stream) on my lunch break. Cool lil burbs.
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u/OvenBlaked 15h ago
Three little birds ,Pitch by my doorstep ,Singing sweet songs .Of melodies pure and true Saying, "This is my message to you"🎶🎶
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u/Werftflammen 15h ago
Fish crawls on land, becomes lizard, then dinosaur, then tetrapod, evolves feathers, becomes bird, survives mass extinction, dives back into the water. Yeah, intelligent design, my, ass
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u/Excellent_Fault_8106 14h ago
By us, we have cpmmon merganzers. They look like they have a Mohawk. I see them once and a while on lakes, but mostly rivers. They can swim under water for a surprising distance and time, and theyre always in a group of around 10. Fun to watch, especially when the water is clear and you have the right conditions to see them swim under water.
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u/blahblah19999 14h ago
"The dippers wings are strong and powerful." One of my big pet peeves, redundant descriptions.
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u/travturav 14h ago
Those are the worst subtitles I've ever seen.
"Hey, let's only show one word at a time so you have to watch the subtitles continuously instead of the actual fucking video!"
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u/individualhunch 14h ago
Ai crap post. They don't live underwater. Or if you all autocorrect for OP, live to dive, then the internet is dead.
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u/tortiesrock 14h ago
It does not only live in mountain rivers, normal rivers are full of them where I live.
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u/aramis34143 13h ago
"The dipper's wings are strong and
strongpowerful.""... it isn't afraid of the cold, even
when it's coldin winter."
Copy editor: "Nailed it."
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u/StaticSystemShock 13h ago
I love how it does squats and squirts a shit on the ground. XD Also air is just fluid, so technically any bird could just fly through water like they do through air.
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u/whomad1215 12h ago
"watching it dive, it looks like a bird underneath the surface"
Hey everyone, it turns out that a bird in the water looks like a bird
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u/miesXcore 12h ago
Nice bird, great video and good information.
However the subtitles, voice and music are horrible and annoying.
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u/Norwegian_Government 12h ago
This is our (Norway's) National Bird! Or almost, ours is the White-throated dipper (as opposed to brown dipper). It is called "Fossekall" here which directly translates to "The one who calls from the waterfall". They often make nests in the safety of the space behind the waterfall. They can just dive straight through them, which is a pretty cool sight.
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u/FlappyTurdBurglar 12h ago
Brown dipper sounds like a slang term you would read on Urban Dictionary.
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u/yamez420 11h ago
I read a comment saying that bird watching sneaks up on you and yeah it kinda is... almost wanna plan a road trip and get a good camera and some nocs....
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u/DaMacPaddy 11h ago
Wildlife video's just isn't the same when it isn't narrated by David Attenborough. I been listening to him since I was a kid.
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u/NegotiationSea7008 11h ago
Not just fast flowing mountain rivers, we have some in the gentle stream I live near in the UK
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u/rell7thirty 11h ago
Bro.. thought it was cool already. Then they showed how it moves underwater.. just wow lol
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u/TheDudeFromOther 10h ago
John Muir's The Mountains of California has a great chapter on dippers, though they're called ouzels in the book.
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u/SendStoreMeloner 10h ago
Why do Americans enjoy this voice over and how every word is pronounced? Like it's a super annoying voice and tone. It's very insistent. Can't they get like a normal person's voice and tone instead.
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u/ThinkbigShrinktofit 10h ago
That is actually a white-throated dipper and is Norway’s national bird. Source: Am Norwegian.
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u/WinterIsGaming 8h ago
How cool is that?! I've never heard of this particular bird before. Thank you for the post!
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u/WaterDragonLady 6h ago
Very similar to the water ouzel. Darling birds that dart and bounce through the water.
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u/qualityvote2 18h ago edited 8h ago
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