Australia, Huh?

You know Australia, the land of the Funnel Web Spider, the Tiapan snake, geographer cone snail, the Irukandji jellyfish, and too many other highly venomous creatures to count.

Well, now we discover that Australian raptors are setting fires to flush out prey.  Yep, we now have pyromaniac dinosaurs (birds are dinosaurs).

I think that everything in that country is trying to kill people:

In more “WTF Australia” tales and referring specifically to the ferocious animals that ended up roaming that tiny little continent, the country’s birds of prey have officially evolved the cunning ability to start their own fires so they can smoke out dinner.

These flying Aussie monsters are deliberately picking up smoking embers from one fire and then dropping them in a grassland area to start a brand new inferno, so the local animals would have to make a run for it. That is some cold-hearted calculating crap. No wonder so many people just desperately want to believe that Australia doesn’t exist.

This horrifying behavior of birds willing to destroy entire habitats for a snack was first recorded back in 2016 in both black kites and brown falcons species. Since then, it has become clear that predatory birds are definitely doing this deliberately and capitalizing on lightning strikes specifically since that is how wildfires are often started in northern Australia. Truly, a magical place.

Aboriginal Australians have known about their frightening fire-wielding raptors for a long time. They’ve testified that the birds are indeed spreading fires and that the phenomenon could even explain how fires often jump fire breaks. It took quite a while for everyone else to take their tales of “the birds did it” seriously, but now that the cat’s out of the bag because it has to outrun another effin wildfire, people are paying attention, and accounts are stacking up.

Also sharks, including Great White Sharks.

This is surreal.