Hello and welcome to today’s Daily Fun Fact From Flora ,

Quick note — these facts are going to take a bit of a break while I prepare for my exams (big eek). There might be a couple here and there but I"m afraid not with the same consistency as before. It will be sporadic and therefore more exciting ? Let’s go with that.

Today we are having another look at weird shit that happens when you keep animals in captivity for too long.

Last time it was The Gastrointestinal Enigma of Pandas (the definite article needed to be capitalised) and today it is The Questionable Migration Tactics of the Northern Bald Ibis okay I made that one up but you get the point.

Now the northern bald ibis is a freaky lookin bird (a face only a mother could love I"m afraid) and it looks like this.

They are not doing so well and so captive breeding programmes have been set up in Austria where they live. But you see they normally migrate from Austria to Italy.

So when you want to release the birds from captivity you have a bit of a problem because they normally learn that migratory route from their parents but what do you do if their parents were raised in captivity too ?

How are they going to learn the migratory route?

Bit of a conundrum really.

Well the researchers weren’t going to give up in the face of a challenge.

They decided to fly with them !!

So the researchers put some robots in a kite and flew the birds from Austria to Italy.

And it looks like they had a great time.

It’s never too late to teach an old bird new migratory routes.

Hope you"ve had a good Monday.

Love Flora xx

Don’t worry — I didn’t forget. Here’s the GIF.