Shoebill Project Objectives

Kenneth Tumusiime and I have several explicit goals, both scientific and economic, as we gear up for our month-long field study of shoebills.

Scientifically, our aims are modest and flexible. We make no pretense that this is cutting edge research, designed to test important hypotheses. This is to be old-fashioned descriptive natural history. A first step.

1. FORAGING BEHAVIOR: The most obvious question that pops to mind about shoebills is simple: what the Hell is that bizarre bill all about? More formally, we will address the question of ‘what ecological factors seem likely to have favored the evolution of the bill’s remarkable lateral expansion?’ Accordingly, we hope to learn enough about how the bill is used to propose some testable hypotheses (candidate explanations) about the natural selection forces that shaped this body part (and all associated structures) over millions of years. For this, our basic method will be observational, hopefully amplified by videos that can be studied later for frame-by-frame details.

2. SIBLICIDAL AGGRESSION: Little is known about shoebill natural history, but is well known that they typically lay more eggs (usually 2, occasionally 3) than they rear as chicks to independence (almost always just 1). When at least two eggs hatch, the younger one is subjected to overt physical abuse by its older sibling (which may be 4 or 5 days older, thus markedly larger due to the rapid pace of early growth). We hope to find some nests in the process of hatching, in which case we'll use tiny GoPro cameras to videotape all daylight hours of the gory process so that key details (e.g., how food is transferred between delivering parent and the two chicks? Do the parents do anything over to keep the younger sibling alive?) can be examined later.

Setting descriptive science aside for the moment, we have reason to hope that raising the profile of shoebills may be of use in developing Uganda’s ecotourism industry, which in turn may help preserve natural ecosystems. It seems remarkable that shoebill behavior has received so little field study since I passed up the chance to do that work in 1977. Instead, online videos of tame captives make shoebills look like affable clowns. They are not.

Indeed, if you return in the next life as an air-breathing fish (or baby crocodile) needing to rise to the water surface 10x/hour for your next gulp of air, this would be a most unwelcome sight. This particular ‘clown’ makes coulrophobia quite sensible.