Revealing the Astounding Beauty of the Most Exquisitely Specialized Animals on Earth

Watch the video that launched Cornell Lab scientist Ed Scholes and photographer Tim Laman's monumental work to document all the species in the wild for the first time

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Blue Bird-of-Paradise by Tim Laman

Video Transcript

They go from expected to extraordinary in the blink of an eye.

You're awestricken. They transform themselves to something that you've never seen before.

They swagger and serenade. They dance and display.

They're unlike any creatures on earth and one of the most astounding phenomena ever witnessed. The Birds of Paradise.

Found here in the nearly impenetrable mountains and valleys of the island of New Guinea, in the greatest remaining tract of rainforest in the entire Asia-Pacific region; they exist nowhere else on earth.

The vast, vast majority of the land around here has no road access. You're just looking up into a wall of steep slope and you can tell that this is just Ridge after ridge and valley upper valley...

Evolutionary Biologist, Ed Scholes and Wildlife Photographer, Tim Laman have spent the better part of a decade trekking into this isolated wilderness in pursuit of all 39 species of these miraculous birds.

"The only way to see a King Bird-of-Paradise is to climb up into the trees where they live so, I'm heading up to my platform."

They've been photographing, analyzing, and recording their every move, every behavior in an attempt to comprehend their secrets.

And in doing so, revealing extreme examples of the miracle of evolution.

"Birds-of-Paradise represent one of these singular events of evolution that stand out that are extraordinary. They're something that's without precedent, something that have evolved that's so unique and so exceptional that you're driven to to say you know, 'Why ?' or you know 'How did that how did that happen how did that come to be?"

The Birds-of-Paradise are remarkable not only further exceptional beauty and almost otherworldly appearance, but as veritable living textbooks on adaptation and sexual selection the females are looking at this whole package and can discern something about him by minor variation.

The more complex it is the harder it is to make it look right you know, if one little feature is out of whack you're gonna be able to tell.

What about New Guinea has led to these birds evolving here and nowhere else? What function do their outrageous plumes and ornaments play? And what exactly are they doing?

"For me it always goes back to the original driving question you know and that's how did it happen? How did the birds-of-paradise come to be?

Witnessed diverse strategies of evolution at work and experience one of nature's most extraordinary hidden wonders up close.

A world where beauty and behavior are intertwined.

A spectacle not possible any other place on earth.

End Transcript

Between 2004 and 2012, Tim Laman and Ed Scholes spent 544 days in the field, visiting 51 sites to document all 39 species of the birds-of-paradise known at that time. Along the way, Tim Laman shot more than 39,000 photographs and together the team recorded countless hours of video documenting the extraordinary beauty and otherworldly behavior of these amazing birds. In the sections below, you can learn more about effort behind the images as well as find out the other projects the team has worked on in the years since.

The Human Endeavor
An undertaking like the Birds-of-Paradise Project demands an explorer’s passion, a scientist’s curiosity, an inventor’s ingenuity, plenty of patience, and endless hard work. See how Ed Scholes, Tim Laman, and their guides met these challenges.
Additional Resources
Our birds-of-paradise adventures have been featured in Attenborough’s Paradise Birds, Planet Earth 2, Our Planet, Living Bird, Birds of Paradise: Revealing the World’s Most Extraordinary Birds…Explore!

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