Eared Grebe

Grebes are not ducks. They are not even closely related to ducks. Grebes are weird. If you recall your middle school biology, you might have memorized the taxonomic hierarchy: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. All birds are in the class Aves, the phylum Chordata, along with us and every other vertebrate, and the kingdom Animalia. The broadest categorization of birds is Order. The largest order, Passeriformes, the passerines, or perching birds includes 6,595 species (robins, cardinals, etc.). Grebes have an entire order, Podicipediformes, to themselves, just 22 species. In one of the more surprising ornithological findings of the last couple decades, the grebes’ closest living relatives appear to be flamingos. DNA research provided the first evidence of this connection, but further research has shown that, despite looking radically different, grebes and flamingos share a number of unusual physical characteristics, too. Some have proposed that grebes and flamingos be combined in a group called Mirandornithes, literally “extraordinary birds.” Isn’t all of nature pretty extraordinary, though?