Transcript:

Today on Animal Fact Files we’re discussing kookaburras. Many of us have probably heard some version of the kookaburra nursery rhyme. It goes something like this: “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree; merry, merry king of the bush is he; laugh, kookaburra laugh, kookaburra gay your live must be.” But how accurate is this? Well kookaburras do laugh, though only one species is known as the laughing kookaburra. There are currently four living kookaburra species. Two, the laughing kookaburra and the blue winged kookaburra, predominantly live in Australia while the other two, the spangled kookaburra and the red bellied kookaburra, predominantly live in Papua New Guinea. Technically laughing kookaburras have been introduced outside of their native range in other parts of Australia as well as New Zealand. This isn’t necessarily a good thing because they compete with native animals of these regions for food and habitat, however, kookaburras who live in their native ranges don’t tend to cause harm.

Kookaburras are large, terrestrial kingfishers. In size, they average about 16 inches (40cm) in length and have up to a 4 inch (10cm) beak! Instead of eating fish like many other birds in their family, kookaburras eat insects, other invertebrates, as well as small rodents and reptiles including lizards and even snakes. Kookaburras swallow their meals whole, so when they eat larger animals like snakes they must first break the animal’s bones in order to more easily swallow it. That’s why kookaburra slam their meals against hard surfaces like trees and rocks. Technically there’s another bird with the common name kookaburra, the shovel-billed kookaburra, but it doesn't share its genus with today’s subjects. Predators to kookaburras include owls, hawks, falcons, snakes, and lizards who will raid a nest, as well as invasive animals like foxes and domestic cats.

In Australia, natural and undeveloped areas may be referred to as “the bush” and kookaburras live in these woodlands and swamps, though they can also be found in human-made places like parks and farms. Kookaburras are also known as “the bushman’s alarm clock” because they’ll make their trilling calls in the early morning and dusk. The laughing kookaburra makes the most iconic “laughing sound”. The other species still have rolling squawks, they just don’t quite have that fun, hearty, laugh-like quality.

In the wild kookaburras may live anywhere from ten to twenty years, though it takes them a few years before they begin breeding. That’s because, like beavers, kookaburras stick around in their parents’ territory for years to help raise their younger siblings. Kookaburras laugh to assert their territory. They live in these family groups that can range anywhere from two to twelve individuals and tend to remain in a single place throughout the year. The parents, who are generally monogamous for life, breed from September to January, which is late spring to early summer in Australia, and the female will lay two to five eggs. The nest may be in a hollowed out gum tree, like the rhyme suggests, but they may all utilize arboreal termite mounds as shown here. The eggs are incubated by all the members of the family group for just under a month and then the chicks spend just over a month in the nest. Once they leave the nest, the babies will stick around for at least a year but up to four before they leave and start their own families.

For more facts on kookaburras, check out the links in the description. Thank you to Redbone for today’s request! Give a thumbs up if you learned something new today, and thank you for watching Animal Fact Files!