Cheating pays, sort of. But for a glossy blue-black bird with a bright yellow eye, cheating doesn’t outdo regular honest parenting. The greater ani, a type of cuckoo found from Panama to the Amazon ...

Spot the impostor: A cuckoo finch chick (left) and a tawny-flanked prinia chick (right) open their beaks for a meal. Photo by Claire Spottiswoode Few examples of parasites in nature are as infamous as ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Common cuckoos aren’t known for being model parents. Rather than ...

When you think about parasites, usually one of the “mind-controlling” types comes to mind, or maybe the chestbursters from the Alien franchise. But in the animal kingdom, particularly among birds, ...

A parasitic cuckoo chick foisted upon other birds can turn out to be luck in disguise, saving the nest with a disgusting defense. About 1 percent of bird species, including cuckoos, outsource their ...

In one of the more notorious dick-moves of the animal kingdom, parasitic cuckoo birds lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, forcing them to raise the cuckoo chicks as if they were their own. New ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Parenting can be lots of work for a bird: all that flying back and forth transporting grubs and insects to a nest of demanding ...

If a restaurant owner fails to pay the 'protection money' demanded of him by the mob, he can expect his premises to be trashed. Warnings like these are seldom required, however, as fear of the ...