From Media to the World News Headquarters in Boseman, Montana, this is Cal's We Can Review

with Ryan Cal-Kell-Anne.

Now, here's Cal.

Failure to launch a problem that affects recently hatched birds forced out of the nest

by their parents, as well as a 2006 movie starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica

Parker.

Although both of these phenomena are extremely painful, here on the show we're not going

to focus on the film that currently has a 24% fresh rating on rotten tomatoes.

Scientists have long studied why certain species of songbirds evict their offspring from

the nest so young.

Many of these fledglings are pushed out before they can fly, and these unlucky individuals

almost always die of exposure or eaten by predators.

How could any parent be so cold-hearted?

And what evolutionary benefit could this behavior possibly confer?

These parent birds are essentially condemning some of their chicks to death.

This is the mystery that two scientists at the University of Illinois decided to get to

the bottom of.

Todd Jones and Michael Ward knew they would need a lot of data to analyze this behavior

across songbird populations, and so they recruited scientists, graduate students, and field

technicians all over the country to help them.

This army of observers recorded how often songbirds forced chicks out of the nest and

what the survival rate was for all offspring, whether they were evicted or not.

...