From treacle floods to poison birds

Boston Molasses Flood 1919

It is odd sometimes how one thing can lead to another: Last night, the not-wife and I
were watching a programme about urban legends and the subject of the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 came up (yes it really happened! over 20 people were killed when a Molasses tank burst). The not-wife mentioned an incident in the Gordon Riots when a catholic owned distillery was ransacked creating a flood of gin which caught fire killing more than a few rioters (A gin distillery was indeed ransacked during the riots. Perhaps it should have been called the Gordon’s riots…). I am not joking - we do have this sort of conversation!

With a streaming cold today and thus time on my hands I decided to look up the distillery incident when I came across the London Riots Re-enactment Society (although somehow I can’t see them being permitted to burn down any distilleries any time soon!). On the same site there was a page relating to poisonous birds.

POISONOUS BIRDS? Someone is having a joke, or so I thought. Zoogoer (the magazine of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park) carried an article about their discovery

In 1989, Jack Dumbacher a graduate student was conducting fieldwork on the ecology of birds of paradise in Papua New Guinea. Part of his research involved catching the birds in fine mist nets. As would be expected other birds would also get caught, and Dumbacher spent a lot of time freeing unwanted species like the hooded pitohui (Pitohui dichrous), a jay-sized songbird with black and orange colouration.

One day Dumbacher was freeing yet another hooded pitohui from his nets when its sharp beak and claws scratched his hand. Dumbacher put his hand in his mouth and got a strange numbing sensation that he recognized as the effect of some toxin. At first he thought nothing of it, but when another member of the team mentioned the same odd sensation. Dumbacher’s interest was piqued. This incident set him on years of research

Hooded Pithoui

It turns out that the Hooded Pithoui (along with a few other species of birds from New Guinea) carries an extremely potent toxin known as batrachotoxin, which is otherwise found in South American poison frogs. It is most likely that they obtain the toxin from their diet rather than make it themselves. The most likely source is a small beetle (the Choresine). Where the beetle gets the poison from is not known.

Interestingly the Pithoui is a pretty common bird in New Guinea and has been studied for over a century but its poisonous qualities went unobserved for decades. A case of hiding in plain sight I suppose. There isn’t much point to this post except to muse on how one can look for one thing but find something totally different. Ah, serendipity!


Bosotn Molasses flood Gordon Riots Hooded Pithoui poisonous bird