Tag Archive | Beaty Museum

Red-throated Caracara talk at Beaty Biodiversity Museum this Sunday!

Red-throated Caracaras are way cool because

If you happen to be in Vancouver this coming Sunday, please consider dropping by for my talk at UBC’s Beaty Biodiversity Museum.

The talk is at 1 pm at the Museum’s lecture hall. The talk is geared to a general audience, and will be filled with cool videos from our recent paper, as well as other unpublished stuff about territoriality and social behaviour.

Here is the blurb:

Red-throated Caracaras are way cool because…They are the wasp-murdering superheroes of the rainforest! Not many animals like to attack and eat social wasps because the stings of these insects are usually an effective defense. The Red-throated Caracara manages to overcome this defense daily, bringing 9 to 15 wasp nests per day to its chicks, and somehow avoiding a painful death from wasp stings. Sean McCann, PhD student at Simon Fraser University and his team investigated the nesting, territorial, and wasp predation behaviour of these wasp specialists over five years to get a better picture of the fascinating life history of these amazing birds.