ck's archive: manakin

Mel and I watched an episode of Nature on PBS last week that showed off the talents of a neat little bird called the manakin. As part of its everyday work impressing the ladies, the male manakin will shake its wingtips at ~80Hz to produce a tone that seems out of place coming from a bird. It also likes to move up and down branches with incredibly rapid and incredibly small steps such that to the human eye, it appears to be simply sliding along the bark. Mel found a flash movie showing off the same footage that PBS used.

And I assure you that the similarity between "manakin" and "Anakin" [Skywalker] is purely coincidental.