Friends I want to talk about a curious animal a bird that is peculiar both for its appearance and for carrying out a pretty horrible habit.

It is the picozapato, a bird similar to the pelicans whose name is more than deserved, because it has a large beak whose shape resembles in a certain way that of a shoe.

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How is the picozapato?

Balaeniceps rex, also known as picozapato, is a gray-pelecaniform bird, prehistoric aspect and a height of over five feet that makes it one of the tallest birds on the planet.

It lives silently and solitarily in swamps and stagnant areas of the tropical regions of Africa, especially in countries like Uganda and, despite its size, it is very difficult to observe because it is in serious danger of extinction.

The curious and macabre habits of the picozapato

Although his diet is mostly made up of fish and frogs, he also has the habit of attacking in a terrifying way the last animal you could imagine: his brother.

In general, females lay only two eggs on each occasion and, once they hatch, are responsible for monitoring the nest, located on the ground, taking care of both offspring at the same time.**

However, in a macabre representation of the evolutionary theory of the "survival of the fittest", at the moment that both chicks are alone they engage in a terrible fight based on shoves and pecks after which only one can be left.

This does not mean that one dies; but, curiously, when the parents return to the nest they develop a terrible rejection towards the chick that has left worse stopped, making the poor animal have to leave and try to survive alone. Unfortunately, that usually does not happen and after trying to survive without the help of his parents he ends up dying after a few days. As a result, the strongest survive, yes, but the population of the species, already depleted, becomes increasingly low, causing, as I said at the beginning, is in serious danger of extinction.

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This practice, known as cainismo, is common in many other species and, despite how terrible it is, it is still another of the many curiosities that nature holds waiting for us to discover them little by little

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