The marabou stork is not the most fetching of avians.
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| "I heard that!" |
As with most birds with largely featherless noggins, it's adapted for a lifestyle that involves a lot of time spent with its head stuck inside of corpses. Can't get your feathers all covered in clotted nastiness if you don't have any.
Most storks eat fish and frogs and the like and are far more attractive animals. Another thing I'm reminded every time I see them is how enormous marabous are. Wingspans in the 7-9 foot range are apparently the norm.
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| "Are you still talking about me?" |
Apparently they've become common dump pests in sub-Saharan Africa:
"Increasingly, marabous have become dependent on human garbage and hundreds of the huge birds can be found around African dumps or waiting for a hand out in urban areas. Marabous eating human garbage have been seen to devour virtually anything that they can swallow, including shoes and pieces of metal. Marabous conditioned to eating from human sources have been known to lash out when refused food."That sounds positively unnerving, because these are some big-ass birds.
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