Sunday, November 13, 2016

Wikipedia Trail: From Oriole to Gondwana

I'm starting my trail at Old World Oriole because I read someone's story about an Oriole and they listed a whole bunch of different things that they could eat and to be honest I wasn't really sure if they ate fruit, nectar and bugs. I thought it was only one or the other. Turns out they do eat both, the article says their diet consists of fruit, berries, arthropods, and nectar.

(Oriole, Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Singapore)

This led me to the page Drongo cause I've really never heard of a Drongo but turns out it's just another kind of bird. They're small and black. They eat bugs and they are very good at mimicking. They can even, apparently sound false alarms but how exactly this benefits them is vague in the article.

(Spangled Drongo, Austrailia)

From Drongo I linked to Madagascar, where the Drongo's name originates from. It's the 4th largest island in the world and 90% of its species are unique to it. Human settlement of the continent between 350 BC and AD 550. It's official languages are French and Malagasy, and it achieved independence from France in 1960.


Lastly I moved on to Gondwana. Madagascar used to be a part of the Supercontinent Gondwana before it split from the Indian Peninsula about 88 million years ago. The landmass formed prior to Pangaea and later joined with Laurasia to become part of it. It began to break up in about the early Jurassic period or 183 million years ago.



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