Tag Archives: Megaceryle alcyon

More bullshit from David Peters’ Website – The jabiru: a long-legged kingfisher, not a stork

This abomination was created by David Peters on October 24, 2017 and I have no words to describe how much it hurts reading that stuff!

The jabiru: a long-legged kingfisher, not a stork

Or maybe kingfishers (genus: Megaceryle, Fig. 1) are just neotonous [sic] (juvenile-like) jabirus (genus: Jabiru, Figs. 2, 3). Certainly the jabiru, with its solid beak, ventrally convex jawline and high small naris, are not like other storks.

Well, has he ever looked at other storks?

Megaceryle alcyon (Linneaus [sic] 1758), the extant belted kingfisher, had an enlarged beak on an enlarged skull with a shorter neck. As in parrots, by convergence, the nares have migrated back to the orbit.

Since this species is still extant it did not had, it has …, and all kingfishers have enlarged beaks on enlarged skulls and shorter necks ….

Jabiru mycteria (Lichtenstein 1819) was a stork-like kingfisher nesting between the stilt/hummingbird clade and the murre/penguin clade (what variety!) Note the high small naris on the ventrally convex rostrum, as in the belted kingfisher.

That is the part that really hurts, the Jabiru is a perfect stork, and the photo DP has chosen to show on his website shows one that has his legs covered in its own feces – something that all storks do to cool down their body temperature, kingfishers, however, don’t … and a stilt/hummingbird- or a murre/penguin clade does not exist ….

If this turns out to be a case of convergence, and it might… that will come with the addition of more taxa. We’ll see…

This is the only time DP mentions convergence, a concept that he usually doesn’t seem to understand … yep, if two species share a similar way of life they may have more or less identical adaptions to that lifestyle (for example: everything that’s living in the water has some fins or flukes of some kind …).

So, in fact, DP says that the Jabiru must be a kingfisher because – and only because – of its beak! He doesn’t think about the hundreds of other features that this species doesn’t have in common with kingfishers but firmly clings to this one – a beak adapted to catch wiggly prey. Wow!

Like already said before, having outlandish ideas is okay, promoting them as being the one and only truth is insane!

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To show you what we talk about here, here are some photographs of the bird species mentioned in the post.:

Jabiru (Jabiru mycteria (Lichtenstein))

Photo: Bernard Dupont
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Belted Kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon (L.))

Photo: Andy Morffew
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

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BTW: There is even a so-called Stork-billed Kingfisher (Pelargopsis capensis (L.)), a species that DP probably never has heard of, otherwise he probably would have chosen this one for his “strange suggestions”.

Stork-billed Kingfisher (Pelargopsis capensis (L.))

Photo: Lip Kee
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

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edited: 31.07.2021