Do You Even Lift, Embryo?
Cuckoos spend their early days murdering fellow nestmates. To pull it off, they start bodybuilding inside the egg.
Some cuckoos are born assassins. Within a day or two of hatching, the infant birds—still blind, pink, and featherless—will start to evict the other residents of their nest, hurling them over the edge and to their death.
Technically, the evictions they carry out are from living quarters that aren’t even their own. The cuckoos are parasites, strategically placed by their mother into the abode of another species so they can mooch their way through adolescence. The more of their foster siblings they kill in cold blood, the more food and attention they can con out of their adoptive parents.
The acts are ruthless, but also
