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An ecology student from Chicago, wondering why his mouth became ‘numb
and tingly’ after sucking a cut on his hand, has discovered a poisonous
songbird in Papua New Guinea – the first poisonous bird on record. After
months of investigation, John Dumbacher confirmed what the local people
knew already: the hooded pitohui, Pitohui dichrous, secretes a toxic chemical.

Dumbacher, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, encountered the
bird while studying birds of paradise. The nets that he and his colleagues
set up in the forest also trapped other birds, including the hooded pitohui.

Pitohuis are ‘pretty feisty’, says Dumbacher, and when he tried to free
one from the nets it scratched his hands. His first instinct was to suck
the scratch, which produced an unpleasant numbness and burning in his mouth.

Dumbacher first thought that the bird may have brushed against a poisonous
plant. But when another student reported a similar experience, they decided
to find out whether the toxin responsible came from the birds themselves.
They had to wait until the next year before they caught another specimen.
Dumbacher pulled one of its feathers and licked it. ‘The sensation was immediate,’
he says. Their findings are reported in the current issue of Science.

Chemical analysis showed that the toxin is concentrated in the bird’s
feathers and skin, and is almost identical to the toxin found in poisonous
frogs in the Amazon. An extract from just 10 milligrams of the bird’s skin,
injected into a mouse, killed the animal in 20 minutes.

Dumbacher found that local people consider the pitohui a ‘rubbish bird’,
because it cannot be eaten unless all the skin is removed and the bird is
boiled. The poison is probably a defence against hawks and snakes, says
Dumbacher.