Scientist Finds Beautiful Rare Bird That's Never Been Photographed - Then Kills It, Because Science...

Science. It’s a brilliant thing that on a regular basis changes our lives forever.

From the discovery of new medicines to the invention of erm… selfie-sticks. Scientists bloody love changing stuff and discovering new things.

Sometimes though, in order to discover great things they apparently have to do bad things, like one Chris Filardi recently did.

Director of the Pacific Program at the American Museum of Natural History, Filardi and his super smart work pals recently went to the Solomon Islands were they came across the ultra-rare male mustached kingfisher.

Upon finding the beautiful orange and blue bird they promptly collected it as a "specimen for additional study". Which basically means – 'we killed it so we could have a proper look at it underneath our science lights'.

Obviously this sent quite a lot of people batshit crazy because you know, he killed a beautiful rare bird. In fact, people were so stressed that Filardi wrote a carefully phrased article called: "Why I Collected a Mustached Kingfisher"

In which he insisted it was okay because the bird wasn’t endangered. Which isn’t really an argument at all.

"Though sightings and information about the bird are rare in the ornithological community, the bird itself is not. Elders of the local land-owning tribe (now living at lower elevations) relate stories of eating Mbarikuku, the local name for the bird; our local partners knew it as unremarkably common," he wrote.

Concluding that it was "standard practice for field biologists."

So there you have it, sometimes science is brilliant. And other times it’s a bit rubbish.

[Via: CNET]

[Image: American Musuem of Natural History/Rob Moyle]