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Feeding Birds Items That Make Them 'Explode'

The internet is awash with numerous debunkings of the suggestion that certain types of rice, bicarbonate of soda/Alka-Seltzer/ baking soda could cause birds/gulls to explode. The consistent opinion is No It Doesn't....eloquently-summarised by the evergreen presenter of TodayIFoundOut

EDIT- I bet calcium carbide WOULD make them explode. One of my many lab accidents included CaC2...and not in a good way)
 
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As attested here, my late mother assured me that her brother used to explode seagulls with carbide in 1920s - 1930s Perth, (Scotland).

If yer mum says it, it's true.

A pre-fame Shaun Ryder and his brother used to blow up pigeons on the rooves of Manchester in much the same way.
 
A Scientist Tested Whether Birds Explode When You Feed Them Rice

There is a strange urban legend which says that you can't throw rice at weddings because birds will eat it, and then the rice will expand in their stomachs and cause them to explode.

The legend dates back to at least the 1980s, when it briefly became all the rage. In 1985, a legislator in Connecticut introduced ''An Act Prohibiting The Use Of Uncooked Rice At Nuptial Affairs'' in an attempt to ''prevent injury and death of birds as a result of ingesting raw rice thrown at weddings".

Representative Mae S. Schmidle repeated the urban legend in support of the bill, which did not pass.

'I have 50 years of professional experience as a practicing ornithologist and I've never heard of such a thing before," president of the Connecticut Ornithological Association Roland C. Clement told AP at the time. "Of course, there can always be a first time, but I would have to see some evidence before I would promote the idea.''

In the first part of [an] experiment [ to test the truth of this tale], the students tested how much different seeds and grains of rice expand when water is added. They found that jasmine rice expanded about 33 percent, while seeds that birds typically eat expand around 40 percent on average (with field corn expanding about 53 percent, and red wheat about 65 percent).

Testing other varieties of rice, they found that none expand more than bird seed, though they noted that instant rice expands more, with instant brown rice expanding 170 percent.

Having established safety in a number of other experiments, the teacher allowed instant rice to be fed to his pigeons as the only source of food for 12 hours, with access to water.

"[Sixty] birds ate 1,500 [milliliters] of instant white rice. They ate the instant rice vigorously then drank during the first 20 minutes," Krupa wrote. "No birds choked to death, exploded, or otherwise died. No birds regurgitated rice or water. No birds showed any sign of distress. The flock continued to feed on the rice for the rest of the day without problem."

Despite the mystery of the grandma killing chickens with rice, the myth is pretty definitively busted.

https://www.iflscience.com/a-scientist-tested-whether-birds-explode-when-you-feed-them-rice-67507

maximus otter
 
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