An American graduate student named Jack made an unlucky discovery while studying birds in Papua New Guinea.

He hung nets in the trees to catch some birds, and when he caught birds that weren't relevant to his research, he'd release them.

One of these irrelevant birds looked like a crow that picked up a job as a traffic controller.

These creatures were mostly black with a bright orange vest of coloration on their chest,

shoulders, and back. Jack caught some of these critters accidentally, and he wanted to release

them, but they didn't make it easy on him.

He tried to take them out of his net, but they bid him hard enough to draw blood.

Eventually, he cleared them out, but his fingers were bloody, so he put him in his mouth briefly to wipe off the blood, and then went to the next sight. No big deal.

Then, his mouth began to tingle, and then it went numb.

Jack Dumbacher, now Dr. Dumbacher, an ornithologist and molecular ecologist, woke up that day

planning to study the mating habits of the Rajiana bird of paradise.

Instead, he poisoned himself with one of the world's most toxic substances

and made one of the most bizarre ornithological discoveries in recent memory.

He stumbled upon a poisonous bird, the hooded Pitta Hui, Pita Huis, Dichrus.

I'm Mackin. This is species.

Welcome to the show.

I want to start today with a massive thank you to all the donors who support this podcast. I put in a ton of work every week and it should be lonely work, right? I'm researching alone. I'm writing alone. I'm recording in my souped up closet alone. But I feel as if I'm part of a big team. Every time I get a notification that one of you

is chipped in a dollar, I feel more motivated to give the week's episode my best. Thank you so much

for your support. Also, we have been inundated with animal episode requests, which is marvelous.

It's a good thing, but while we have

literally years worth of animals in most genera, we don't have a lot of fish or amphibians,

and we could do with some more birds. If you have any ideas, go to mac and murphy.org

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