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Oilbird — printable fact sheet
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Oilbird
Steatornis caripensis
Steatornis caripensis is the only nocturnal flying fruit-eating bird in the world, and one of the only birds that echolocates. It roosts by day in deep caves in northern South America and Trinidad, in colonies of hundreds, and navigates the pitch-dark interior with audible click…
Did you know?
- Oilbirds have some of the most sensitive night vision of any terrestrial animal, allowing them to see in conditions nearly as dark as a moonless night.
- The oilbird's retina has the highest density of rod cells recorded in any vertebrate — around a million rods per square millimetre, stacked in banks three deep — which is what lets it find fruit by starlight. It is the sole member of its family, Steatornithidae, with no close living relatives among the nightjars and frogmouths it superficially resembles. GPS tracking has shown individual birds spending days at a time roosting in trees rather than caves, which means the "cave bird" is a less obligate troglodyte than long assumed.
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