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Feeding Birds Items That Make Them 'Explode'

I wish someone would explode the seagulls round here. Recently they've started ripping open garbage bags left out for collection, which they didn't use to do, although the ones in nearby Falmouth did. Perhaps we've got an immigrant gull teachingthe locals bad habits.

I'll have to go back to booby-trapping my bags with black pepper or something. But with any luck they'll stuff their guts with plastic and starve to death.
 
The shaun ryder/pigeon thing wasn't to do with rice.......

He allegedly pumped manchesters pigeons with E, LSD and anphetamines (sp?) as he generally wanted them all dead. Must have been an expensive time for Mr Ryder.

--kiel--
 
I thought the thing with the cats is that you're supposed to butter the back of a cat (a lá toast) and drop it and see what happens. The joke being that cats land on their feet and toast always lands butter-side down.

Ellie.
 
Mr Ryder is full of self-mythologising cack IMHO. In his scally days, before the Mondays made it, would he really be spending money on drugs that didn't end up down his own throat?!

I think I've heard both stories about Shaun Ryder, drugged pigeons and exploding pigeons.
 
Anyone remember the exploding whale video footage? This was actually shown on Channel5 on saturday night. Brilliant.
 
I know for sure that rats can't vomit

Uhhh... how exactly do you know that, then, schnor? Have you been conducting some sort of diabolical rat-vomit experimentation?;)
 
Like showing them nude pics of Mo Mowlam or something? :eek!!!!:
 
The exper... umm, well yes, *ahem* ... I was told it my a lecturer at my old agriculture college - it's the basis for all rat poisons, as you don't have to make them sweet or taste nice but they have to be strongly tasted.

I think they've got a strange throat/windpipe setup so they can breathe when eating or something :eek:
 
mejane said:
Um, rat poison surely kills also cats, dogs, people etc? I thought it was, well, poison which acts on the nervous system :confused:

cats and dogs maybe, but not people (unless they eat cats and dogs) it's all down to food chain accumulation...
the smaller an animal is the less of a poisen it neads to kill it, but if a cat for example were to eat one poisen killed rat then it may feal unwell but it wouldn't die, if it went and ate a few rats it would die and have a larger dose of poisen in it.
For a large enouth dosage to kill a person they'd have to eat a great many cats (or probably more poisened grain than you'd feal comfortable eating in one sitting) hence the world of humans rejoces at it's relative safty whilst avoiding dead cats on the path.
 
I once ate some rat poison when I was about seven. Well, when I say ate, I gave it a damn good chew and then spat it out (it was on wheat grains). I wonder if it gave me M.E? :(
 
poison

As I recall the poison in rat poison is Warfarin or one of a number of similar variants. This stops blood clotting by interferring in with the metabolism of vitamin K. Small quantities do not effect humans Much but the rat usually dies of internal bleeding. One of the treatments for thrombosis is to give the victim warfarin!
 
My mother assured me that when she was a child (in the 1920s?), she and her brother used to explode pigeons. (You had to make your own fun in 1920s Perth...)

The MO was to use small pieces of the calcium carbide used to generate gas for old-fashioned lamps. Wrap the carbide in bread, throw to pigeon, stand well back.

The lamps used to operate by generating acetylene gas by dripping water onto the calcium carbide. The gas so generated was fed to the burner and ignited to provide the light.

I failed chemistry A-level spectacularly, so I can only speculate that the hydrochloric acid in a bird's tripes would enhance the reaction to such an extent that the gas would be unable to escape fast enough via "normal channels."

I prefer my Weihrauch air rifle myself. Leaves much more for casseroles.

maximus otter
 
maximus_otter said:
My mother assured me that when she was a child (in the 1920s?), she and her brother used to explode pigeons. (You had to make your own fun in 1920s Perth...)


I prefer my Weihrauch air rifle myself. Leaves much more for casseroles.

maximus otter

Having been to Perth, I believe it.
 
There's a scene in the film "24 Hour Party People" that depicts Shaune Rider and his brother feeding something to pigeons on a Manchester rooftop to the tune of "Ride Of The Valkyries"...

20060717-24%20hour.png
 
So if birds can fart but choose not to*, whence the urban myth that you can make a seagull explode (or at any rate expire) by feeding it lumps of bread soaked in bicarb? As I understand it, the legend is that the bicarb reacts with the avian digestive system to give off gas, which the poor bird cannot expel. But this seems to suggest actually they can?

* Like gentlemen and accordions.
 
So if birds can fart but choose not to*, whence the urban myth that you can make a seagull explode (or at any rate expire) by feeding it lumps of bread soaked in bicarb? As I understand it, the legend is that the bicarb reacts with the avian digestive system to give off gas, which the poor bird cannot expel. But this seems to suggest actually they can? ...

The digestive system has two ends capable of opening. Birds typically regurgitate anything that causes gastric distress.
 
The digestive system has two ends capable of opening. Birds typically regurgitate anything that causes gastric distress.
So, either way (as it were), birds are capable of ridding themselves of troublesome stomach contents? (It would seem a bit of an evolutionary, uh, hiccup, were they not to be.) And so the exploding seagull is indeed an urban myth?
 
So, either way (as it were), birds are capable of ridding themselves of troublesome stomach contents? (It would seem a bit of an evolutionary, uh, hiccup, were they not to be.) And so the exploding seagull is indeed an urban myth?

So far as I know - yes, on both counts.

One can find faked / doctored videos purporting to illustrate seagulls exploding after eating gas-producing items (e.g., Alka-Seltzer), but I've never been able to find a documented case of this actually occurring.

P.S. The same goes for the related urban myth that birds will die if they eat rice which swells inside them (e.g., rice thrown at a wedding). With respect to this bird myth, there has actually been a series of experiments clearly demonstrating birds weren't adversely affected by eating rice and water. Strangely, the study noted that proportional rice expansion in the gut is actually less than the expansion of commercial bird seed.
 
...the urban myth that you can make a seagull explode...by feeding it lumps of bread soaked in bicarb? As I understand it, the legend is that the bicarb reacts with the avian digestive system to give off gas...

My late mother (b. 1913) assured me that her brother (d. 1941) used to explode seagulls. The accelerant was not sodium bicarbonate, however; it was calcium carbide (CaC2). Allegedly the reaction between stomach acid and carbide produced huge quantities of acetylene gas (C2H2) which inflated the bird beyond its elastic capacity. Carbide was readily obtainable as its acetylene-producing capabilities were used in bicycle lamps, etc.

Ah, the simple pleasures of the poor...

maximus otter
 
however; it was calcium carbide (CaC2).
This sounds very-possible, as Calcium Carbide was commonly-used as the gaseous autoinflation source for life-preservers/'mae wests'/lifejackets, and inflatable liferaft/survival craft, tell-tale marker buoys/balloons etc ( @rynner2 is this still a current technology?) . This would typically use sea-water as the activation trigger and co-reactant.

In my lab days (yes, back when I was a labrador.... !-) I remember witnessing the kinetic effects of a 1kg tin of powdered CaCl that became endampened, going kaboom with extreme ferocity. Made an impressive convex exit wound in my fume-cupboard...

But bird-popping via intra-intestinal gas generation: unsure (as I am an unreal biologist) but I'd've expected avian alimentary paths to have possessed minimal ruminant/convolution morphology (ie they are 'straight through' animals, pretty much, from beak to butt, with their cloacae eternally-emitting aquafecal excreta).

My point is that I'm doubtful as to whether there might be sufficient maintained septum visceral endocavition to allow the baited bird to become inflated. Happy to be proven wrong (as I'm usually full of hot air)
 
But bird-popping via intra-intestinal gas generation: unsure (as I am an unreal biologist) but I'd've expected avian alimentary paths to have possessed minimal ruminant/convolution morphology (ie they are 'straight through' animals, pretty much, from beak to butt, with their cloacae eternally-emitting aquafecal excreta).

My point is that I'm doubtful as to whether there might be sufficient maintained septum visceral endocavition to allow the baited bird to become inflated. Happy to be proven wrong (as I'm usually full of hot air)
I love it when you talk dirty.
 
My late mother (b. 1913) assured me that her brother (d. 1941) used to explode seagulls. The accelerant was not sodium bicarbonate, however; it was calcium carbide (CaC2). Allegedly the reaction between stomach acid and carbide produced huge quantities of acetylene gas (C2H2) which inflated the bird beyond its elastic capacity. Carbide was readily obtainable as its acetylene-producing capabilities were used in bicycle lamps, etc.

Ah, the simple pleasures of the poor...

maximus otter

Happy Mondays singer Shaun Ryder used to explode pigeons in the 1980s using much the same method, as recreated in the film Twenty-Four Hour Party People - though that features them falling out of the sky like a torrential rainstorm.
 
My late mother (b. 1913) assured me that her brother (d. 1941) used to explode seagulls. The accelerant was not sodium bicarbonate, however; it was calcium carbide (CaC2). Allegedly the reaction between stomach acid and carbide produced huge quantities of acetylene gas (C2H2) which inflated the bird beyond its elastic capacity. Carbide was readily obtainable as its acetylene-producing capabilities were used in bicycle lamps, etc.

Ah, the simple pleasures of the poor...

maximus otter

I'm doubtful about this, and I wouldn't take Shaun Ryder's account on anything as gospel. For a start, birds can burp, so can expel excess gas.

How much calcium carbide would the bird have to eat to produce any effect & wouldn't the bird notice it was eating something unusual & possibly slightly toxic? maybe it's in fact delicious to birds..If a bird did indeed emit acetylene gas near a naked flame it may well explode.

If it really was a thing there would be numerous youtube vids & there don't seem to be any.
 
...wouldn't the bird notice it was eating something unusual & possibly slightly toxic?

From memory the M.O. was to embed the carbide in bread, then throw the boobytrapped package to the shitehawks. Think “trying to get pill into dog by wrapping it in bacon”.

maximus otter
 
From memory the M.O. was to embed the carbide in bread, then throw the boobytrapped package to the shitehawks. Think “trying to get pill into dog by wrapping it in bacon”.

maximus otter

I follow the M.O. but it appears to be a myth or urban legend. There's no evidence that it's actually possible. Your mother may have been yanking your chain.
 
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