There Is No Such Thing as a "Raptor" 

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SHOW ME THE BIRDS!!!!

I collect eggs from my chickens daily, I am the oviraptor!

"If you like kingfisher we can't be friend" -some small fish

If Clint was a character in an Ancient Greek tragedy, his punishment would be to be banished to a universe without molecular phylogenetics.

Raptor is a behavioral-morphological category, not a cladistic one. It’s like the old definition of “beast” (which refers to cattle, horses, oxen, etc).

Yes, do one on ravens. The ravens that live in Death Valley understand how zippers work. I watched one unzip my motorcycle panniers and take my lunch. They also know how to turn on the faucets at campgrounds to get a drink of water.

As a parrot enthusiast I am SO happy you're defending budgies!!

PLEASE I NEED A FULL OWL VIDEO!!! I love owls so much! It would be absolutely incredible to see someone as educated as you talk about them in detail ❤

“If you’re into that kind of thing” Good sir, you know dam well we’re into kind of that thing!

The raven-form thing is similar to how birds are not bird-hipped dinosaurs.

Guatemalan here, I loved your comment about Quetzales and gringos. You are now living in my heart forever.

You know, I've had an awful day & had zero interest in watching a video about birds right now. But I am so glad I clicked this one because the level of genuine excitement & enthusiasm Clint shows when teaching about animals has absolutely made my day 😁

"Grabby foot murder birds" are my favorite.

I was once taking video of a kangaroo rat at night in the Mojave desert. One second it was there, I blinked my eyes, and it was gone. I moved the camera around to search for it but it was nowhere to be seen. Even switching to thermal showed nothing. It was only after reviewing the footage that a few frames revealed a barn owl snatched it. Never heard or saw the owl and I was only 10 feet (maybe 3 meters) away.

“But not side to side or back in time” some of these phrasings are so good 😂 what an excellent teacher, clint’s videos and his absolutely infectious enthusiasm for even the weird parts (especially the weird parts) of biology have been the way i’ve finally been able to break into understanding animal taxonomy. It’s been such a bogeyman subject of mine for my whole life and now I’m finally starting to get it! thank you clint!!!

Fun fact! The Seriemas, (Order Cariamiformes) are the only extant animals with a sickle claw. They are essentially modern day dromaeosaurids! They use this claw to pin their prey to the ground as they dispatch it.

man...Clint's excitement over these subjects just makes me happy

AI Clint's issues are one of the main concerns with people using LLMs as actual research and content generation tools. People call them "hallucinations" but I've never found this to be a term that particularly accurately captures what is going on. A hallucination implies that in any other state one can see things clearly, but LLMs basically *only* hallucinate. They don't really know anything. They just take a prompt as an input and then generate the words that are the nearest neighbors in the answer space to the prompt, then generate words that are the nearest neighbors to those words, and so on. I work on somewhat similar problems, but related to images instead of words, and when you examine the neighbors for something like an image search algorithm, most will make sense, some always won't. AI Clint can't say "I don't know" because AI Clint doesn't know anything. If I asked you where third street is, you would think of where third street is, and, if you knew, then construct a response that would communicate the information back to me. AI Clint never does that middle step. He hears a question, and jumps immediately to constructing a response in the proper form for the question. Since the data he was trained on does contain factual information, if where third street was was present in that training data it is quite likely to include that information in the response, since something has to go in the noun and direction spaces when he says "noun is in direction", and third street and the direction to third street are probably going to be the best candidates, but it never actually thinks about where third street is. He just generates an appropriate sounding response. The response is always a hallucination. It's just usually a hallucination that reflects reality, at least to an acceptable degree.

Clint is easily my favorite channel right now. His enthusiasm is so contagious! Great work, once again!

You got it right Clint; we could do with a segment completely on owls. They are amazing creatures. Bring it on - please. I do not know anyone who is as enthusiastic about their job as you are, you inspire people and just draw them in, its electrifying.

"Show me the birds!" Did exactly as told sir.

Owls are cat software on bird hardware (cat's whiskers serve the same purpose for the same reason)

Clint, love this video. Did not know Falcons and Hawks were not as closely related as they seem! Love to see more features focused on Owls (ears pointing on up and one down!), Ravens vs Crows, the family of Night Jars and Whippoorwills, extinct birds like the Death Bird! and How, again?, Pterosaurs are not related to birds... etc. yes, so many fascinating creatures...you will never run out of amazing videos! Thank you !

Loved the way you explained circleing in voultures, they are my absolute favourite birds. I still remember when i lived close to a small forest and would always see circle behavior through my bedroom window, it was sharing a space with them that made me realize that circleing behavior really does have nothing to do with finding food. When you see circleing behaviour it often does last quite a bit, and without any trying to reach the food, which would make no sense. However, when i was cycleing near the forest i remember vividly the strong smell of decomposition near the street, and, surprise surprise, a line of 25 vultures (that i counted of) just sitting there by the side of the road, absolutelly one of the most astounishing and joyfull moments i ever experience. THIS is true voulture feeding behavior!

Show me the birds! Yes, I’m a biased ornithologist who would love to see this channel cover all of the birds. All. Of. Them. Thank you, Clint for a wonderful video!

I believe colius (the root of coliiformes) comes from the Greek "kolios", which is the name of a kind of woodpecker. And yes, coliiformes are not woodpeckers. But as far as I can tell, it's a neoclassical analogy based on the general shape of the birds.

I had a sun conure named Quetzal. She was a wonderful and beautiful creature. We still miss her.

Did a little digging and all i could come up for the Coliiformes is; Coliiformes -> colius form/shape birds as noted by the genus it encompases Colius -> Koleos, greek for scabbard, possibly in reference to the long tails in the same way a sword's scabbard is also long.

Great idea! Do a Corvid episode. Corvids are such beautiful, intelligent, charismatic, and widespread birds. And you can probably find a friend to bring one as a live example on set. (Bonus if you can find 2 friends with both a crow and raven) You can discuss all the many differences between crows and ravens, as well as the myths around these popular birds! You can also market this video to the Halloween/October crowds (along with the "terrible skeleton" reviews). Jeez, that could easily be a 45 minute episode for a relatively small group. I knew a charismatic researcher that studied them at the Field Museum in Chicago several years ago.

"If you don't like kingfishers, we can't be friends, or you're a small fish." - Clint Laidlaw T-shirt plez

This channel is dangerous. I have other things I need to do, but here I am learnin' birds.

SHOW ME THEM BIRDS!! -a future ornithologist

When the legend that is Sir David Attenborough finally moves on (which I hope isn’t any time soon) I’d be quite happy for you to take up his mantle.

One of my favorite Larson cartoons says "Birds of prey know they're cool."

Quetzal! Love to see it! I wish we could normalize emphasis on the second syllable, though, more similar to the way most say it in Guate. kets-ALL. Rad video as always!

I love how this isn't just a phylogeny video but cool facts and first principals video

As for Coliiformes, mousebirds' original names were Coly/Colies. It appears that the scientific name of "Colius" came directly from that original name of Coly. So the etymology of Coliiformes is "Coly (bird)" + "-iformes". So we just need to know why Colies were called Colies before the late 1700s when the scientific term of "Colius" was first coined. Fun fact, while Coly was the original name in English, mouse-bird (muisvoël) was first used in South Africa, but mousebird only started to take hold within the 1900s

I remember I had a really tough exam at the faculty and when I was walking to it, I heard a little ploinking sound. I was walking by the river, so I started looking at it and saw that the sound was made by a kingfisher diving into the river. I never saw it again so far into the centre of the city (Ljubljana, capital of Slovenia) and I'd like to think that it brought me luck, I passed that exam :)

I just love these Phylogeny videos. so much information and so up to date, please keep making them!

I'm so excited that you were excited to talk about the Owls! Going into this they're my favorite of these groups! If you did a whole video on how owls are silent that would be so cool

Okay, my mine has been blown. I've never looked into this with that much depth but I had believed that Raptors were an actual group of birds of a common lineage. Clint, you are a scholar and a gentleman and we appreciate the education.

"they're too square to be compared to a Phoenix..." Clint, it's hip to be square

This video has been the single most potent nergasm in my life, thank you

Is there a possibility of getting more larger bird species videos? Especially species that are more rare, like harpy eagles, or for ones that are surrounded by stigma but incredibly important to ecosystems like vultures. These guys are absolutely awesome and deserve some love! You are awesome, Clint! Steve Irwin would be proud!

I haven't even made it through this video yet but I just have to say that, Clint, the focus on taxonomy, phylogeny & cladistics just makes my heart happy. The relationships, the categories, the relationships between categories.... I'm not even a biologist. I'm a chef and I immediately think of the Solanaceae. Is it a pepper, a potato, a tomato, an eggplant, nightshade? I digress. Your YT channel is great & I love your excitement about learning & disseminating info. People ARE monkeys!!

The phylogeny here is very well presented. I appreciate the treatment of the base of Telluraves as a four-way polytomy. I'm with you also that coraciiforms are amazing! Rainbow-colored, burrowing, predatory dinosaurs don't seem like a thing that would exist, but there they are. You might be interested in a recent paper led by researchers from the The Peregrine Fund that proposed an updated definition of "raptor" with a phylogenetic component. Following the implication that the last common of Telluraves was likely a raptorial bird, they suggested that raptors should be defined as members of Telluraves that _retain_ the ancestral habit of feeding primarily on vertebrates. Under this definition, raptors include vultures, hawks, owls, and falcons, and notably also seriemas and terror birds, but excludes non-telluravians with raptor-like features (like skuas) or telluravians that secondarily reverted to being major vertebrate predators (like shrikes). Of course "raptors" in this sense still aren't a clade, but a specific ecomorphological category within Telluraves. McClure, C.J.W., S.E. Schulwitz, D.L. Anderson, B.W. Robinson, E.K. Mojica, J.-F. Therrien, M.D. Oleyar, and J. Johnson. 2019. Defining raptors and birds of prey. Journal of Raptor Research 53: 419-430. doi: 10.3356/0892-1016-53.4.419 A lot has been written in both popular and scientific literature about supposed shock-absorbing qualities of woodpecker skulls, but recent empirical research examining high-speed video footage of woodpeckers suggests that they may not have any such mechanism at all. Although counterintuitive, it makes sense from a physical perspective: due to Newton's 3rd law, woodpeckers would ironically have to peck even harder and expose themselves to even higher forces than they already do if they were dampening the shock from their own blows. Instead, probably the main reason they avoid serious injury from pecking is simply that they are much smaller than us, so it would require much higher acceleration for their brains to experience highly damaging forces compared to ours. Van Wassenbergh, S., E.J. Ortlieb, M. Mielke, C. Böhmer, R.E. Shadwick, and A. Abourachid. 2022. Woodpeckers minimize cranial absorption of shocks. Current Biology 32: 3189-3194. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2022.05.052 The name Australaves comes from the idea that this clade originated in the Southern Hemisphere, even though they are found globally today. Seriemas are only found in the Southern Hemisphere, and within modern falcons, parrots, and passerines the deepest divergences all appear to have taken place in the south as well. There is always some risk to relying only on modern species for inferring biogeographic history, especially for a group like birds, which are very good at getting around (mousebirds for example are only found in Africa today, but their fossil record shows that they were once very diverse in North America and Europe). For the Australaves though, this hypothesis has so far held up reasonably well.

Delightfully funny and informative. Keep these videos and your humorous approach rolling!

clint you are so entertaining. i love when you keep a straight face AND when you giggle at your funny bits. i’ve learned tons of interesting facts and, one day, i may even retain them.

Clint laughing at his own jokes in the bloopers is the most wholesome thing I have stumbled across on the internet.

Show me the birds! And all the other phylogenies. I love your phylogeny vids!

You give me so many Bill Nye vibes, I love it! Your videos make learning about animals and the world so much fun.

Love this series, thank you.

From my research on the origins of coliiformes, it seems like it may come from a greek term kolios used to describe a type of woodpecker in Aristotles "History of Animals" that was then translated to colius in latin which becomes the base of coliiformes.

When someone asks what my favorite dinosaur is, my answer is modern avian dinosaurs (birds). They have still managed to be one of the most successful, diverse, and intelligent groups of dinosaurs on the planet.

That moth is ADORABLE.

"And owls? Gosh we don't really know where they go." I knew it! I've probably been related to owls this whole time!

Yes! One of my favorite channels about to drop some more knowledge. 🦅 SHOW ME THE BIRDS!

I’ve been watching this channel for so long but all of the AI photos are really getting in the way of my support and love for this channel. Not the AI assistant / AI Clint, because I assume you used your own work to create that, but the amalgamations of artworks and photographs that exist through stolen work. Those could have just been photographs, or art. Those could have been credited works instead of just slop pictures with a little “AI generated” stamped onto it. Come on, you have to see how much this hurts artists and everyone who’s photos have been taken without consent and fed into generators.

love these videos. taxonomy blows my mind, and I appreciate your humor and attention to detail, like getting into etymology and unique adaptations. so cool.

Is nice to see how so very happy this man is talking about his stuff

Is it just late at night and I'm getting delirious, or would that jumpcut of Clint with the quote "If you don't like kingfishers we can't be friends, or you're a small fish" make an absolutely excellent shirt?

"And I ran, I ran so far away." Seagulls can run, but a Flock of Seagulls prefers to fly away, or sing great 80's songs.

Brilliant writing.

Thanks!

As soon as you said the word “Thermals”, my Animorphs book series memories unlocked from somewhere deep within the recesses of my brain.

When you do the video about owls, mention that they aren't actually shaped as they seem. If you find a pic of a naked (featherless) owl, they actually look like a normal bird in body shape. They have a long, skinny neck, a long beak, et cetera. But their feathers make them LOOK like they have short necks and beaks. This is also why they seem to have such bizarre neck-turning ability: They SEEM to have short necks that rotate like they're possessed, but actually have very long necks that can reasonably turn all the way around. Of course they also have amazing head-motion control, to help them target prey audibly, so that they can rotate their head on a single axis, which most birds cannot.

Such a great video!!!

Vultures are my favorite animal on earth, and a video on them would make me ecstatic! ❤❤ This was a fun one!

The bird name that I most relate to is the short-legged ground roller ☺️😂

I might be alone in this- but I'd greatly prefer using stock images in editing rather than ai generated images. This is considering the legal and ethical gray area that generative AI is in. Although not everyone sees it as a gray area, I hope you all are thinking critically about whether using it adds to the video substantially or not. Thank you for all the great videos!

Great job, love your style

I LOVE KESTRELS THEY ARE THE VERY GOODEST

Your energy is enchanting and paired with the oh, so funny things you throw into the mix (“hagfish of birds, Catholic birds”) I can’t help but to try my hardest to glean whatever information I can from your talks. So entertaining and fun! 👍🏼

Coloofornes comes from the Greek κολιός (koliós) which is a type of woodpecker. So it is woodpecker-form

It's an insane coincidence that I've stumbled upon this channel whilst taking comparative zoology

I love all of these reptiles

Your explanation of vulture circling behavior leaves out the main reason: Vultures circle carcasses to attract other vultures. This has a greater evolutionary benefit than getting higher to see farther away, because if there are enough of you then you can drive away ground scavengers, and even ones they can't drive away are less likely to kill an individual vulture, through the confusion effect. Of course rising to see farther is a benefit, but it's secondary, and probably wouldn't even be worthwhile by itself, versus getting to the food sooner to eat.

7:17 vultures show other vultures where the hot currents are, they confuse away other scavengers, they see better form a high vantage point. That is why they encircle.

My friends are starting to think I'm a bit strange because I keep telling them about the Clint's Reptiles videos I've watched. Well, my response to that is...fine, if I am a bit strange, I am a bit strange. Who could not love the engaging, educational, and entertaining videos about the animals around us. Thank you for the effort you put into this. Keep'em coming!

hey clint, i love your content, your style making them and, of course, the subjects you are covering! I´m a big bird- , reptile and dinosaur-enthusiast. i´d love to see you guys would make a whole video about TERRORBIRDs. keep up with this amazing content of yours!

10:31 That first photo shows a buzzard (buzzards aren't vultures, btw). Clint's quick overview of the Accipitridae, left out the genus Accipiter, the true hawks.

Yes! More birds! Definitely looking forward to corvids (bluejays are so misunderstood 💙). There's a Red Shouldered Hawk pair that nests in our backyard (a juvinile came and sat on our porch last year!) and I've been learning a lot about falcons, eagles, buzzards (or "hawks" as we call them in the US), etc... fascinating creatures!

I was a docent at the Cascades Raptor Center in Eugene, Oregon for a while (which I highly recommend visiting) and seeing these birds up close is awe inspiring.

I can’t like this video enough!! ❤❤❤

Grabby-foot murder birds..... 😂 I love this sooo much.... Show me the birds. I love how you threw Dav Kaufman into the parrot clade.

Birds are so amazing I can’t decide which group is my favorite! They’re all so lovely!

I live for these videos

Id absolutely love to see an in-depth video on the corvids!

I love the nerdiness. Reminds me of the wonderful years I spent at the natural history museums here. Keep ‘em going Clint 👍

Would love to see more on Vultures, Owls, Corvids, and Shrikes.

Budgies are my favorite parrots. They have huge personalities in tiny bodies.

Yes to the bird video!!!!!

Clint, you do not need to ask if I'm into that kind of thing. The answer is always YES!

Mohawk parrot? That is the single greatest descriptor ever! How have I not heard that? I would love to see a video on crows, ravens, jays, magpies, etc. Those are fascinating birds!

Budgie are the ultimate parrot as a species and as a pet/ companion bird!

You are such a dork... and that's fantastic!

I’m so happy to hear you’re planning a video on corvids! And can we please get a video on if a crow is the best pet dinosaur?

Ah yes, my favorite mobile game: Grabby Bird

I love watching you crack yourself up! 😂😂😂