Jack Dumbacher is a bird expert and researcher who was in New Guinea with this team attempting to learn more about the Raggiana (a bird native to that area), but what they found instead was quite surprising.

While netting birds to try to capture the Raggiana, they would often catch a different bird known as the hooded pitohuis. This is a common issue with bird catching and is easily solved by carefully getting the unwanted birds out of the net and releasing them.

During this process, this bird would sometimes peck or bite the researchers, which could draw small amounts of blood. As almost everyone has done when experiencing a small injury like this, the researchers would quickly put the area where they were pecked in their mouth and suck on it.

While that is very normal, the results in this case were quite odd. They noticed that their mouths would tingle, burn, and even go numb. Sometimes these symptoms would last to the next day.

In a video (see it at the bottom of this page), Dumbacher explains that they talked to the locals about the bird:

“We said ‘What do you know about these birds, they appear to be poisonous to us. And they said ‘Oh yeah, those are rubbish birds, they’re good for nothing. You can’t even eat those birds,’ and so we immediately started a study on the hooded pitohuis.”

Their research found that it wasn’t the bite or peck from the bird, but instead, it was an issue that stemmed from when they handled the bird to get it out of the net. The feathers of the bird had a steroidal alkaloid neurotoxin in it. Dumbacher says:

“It can cause at first the tingling, the numbing sensation. In higher doses, it can lead to paralysis, cardiac arrest, and death. Gram for gram, it’s one of the most toxic natural substances known.”

Fortunately, the amount that would get onto the hands of the researchers was minimal. It would, however, be enough to discourage many types of predators from attempting to attack the bird.

Check out the video where Dumbacher explains what happened here:

I didn’t know birds could be poisonous.

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