THE HOODED pitohui, a bird native to New Guinea, has a deadly surprise in store for predators. Its brilliant orange and black feathers and its skin are laced with a potent toxin called homobatrachotoxin, and researchers say it is the first known bird using poison in self-defence. The poison acts as a neurotoxin, disrupting the sodium balance in the predator's nerve cells and causing muscles to contract uncontrollably.

Bruce M Beehler of Wildlife Conservation International, a division of the New York Zoological Society, reporting on the hooded pitohui in Science (Vol, No ) said, "There are about 9,200 species of birds out there, and no one has turned up this phenomenon of chemical defense."