Get to Know Shoebill: Africa's Intimidating, Giant Prehistoric-Looking Bird Is Under Threat

The Shoebill is one of the weird-looking birds you will probably meet in the animal kingdom. It is so stern-looking as it retains the prehistoric look of wild birds. However, no matter how intimidating they look, shoebills are under threat.

Get to Know Shoebills

Shoebills (Balaeniceps rex), also known as the whalebill, are large water birds. They are strange-looking birds with front-facing eyes behind their 5-inch wide bills. They stand between 3.5 and 5 feet tall and weigh between 11 and 13 pounds.

They can live for up to 50 years in captivity. When their wings are fully extended, they can measure up to eight feet across.

Ralf Mullers, an ecology lecturer at Van Hall Larenstein in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, told Newsweek, likened their long legs to that of storks and herons. They reportedly sometimes wade through water to catch their prey.

Thanks to their long legs, they can move into deeper water. Their long thin legs could look like reeds tricking prey into moving closer to them, which is very helpful for them in finding food.

According to Fact Animal, they are piscivorous, so their diet primarily includes lungfish, Tilapia species, and catfish. However, they occasionally consume frogs, lizards, water snakes, baby crocodiles, rodents, and smaller waterfowl.

They specialize in large prey and have reportedly co-evolved and become larger because large birds can eat large prey.

How Did Shoebill Evolve?

Although they are also called shoebill storks, they are storks. They are alone in the evolutionary family, and their closest living relatives were the Pelecaniformes, which emerged around 65 million years ago, towards the end of the Cretaceous period.

According to Mullers, shoebills' appearance results from natural selection and evolution. It is one of the few species adapted to the large prey species. Herons, egrets, and storks forage on smaller species with a different strategy for attacking their prey.

Also, they catch and swallow large fish. They have a large gape, allowing them to swallow their prey as a whole since they do not chew their food.

Also, like other fish-eating birds, such as gannets and albatrosses, they have a hook at the top of their bill to process slippery fish.

Shoebills Are Under Threat

Shoebills are under threat and are classified as "vulnerable" worldwide by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List.

Muller could not tell their numbers because some of the populations are in countries where they are challenging to monitor, like South Sudan and Congo.

In August 2022, a chick shoebill was added to the Ugandan bird population. The young reportedly looked healthy. The shoebills were spotted at Mabamba Bay swamp, a bird conservation area in Uganda.

However, the consensus is that probably 5,000 to 8,000 adults are left in the wild.

Among the factors that threaten their existence are habitat loss, competition, disturbance by people and livestock, fire, and illegal trade.

Muller said they target the same prey as fishermen in wetlands and may be considered a competition. Thus, they could be killed by people.

Also, even if fishermen do not kill shoebills, they still disturb them by being in the same area. Thereby interfering with their foraging and breeding behavior.

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