Photo Credit: “Ramphastos toco” by Daph Chloe

We know toucans as tropical birds with big noses that sell us cereal, but scientists just found out why Toucan Sam’s nose is so big. It’s not cause he’s nosey and likes to be all up in your breakfast, it’s because he needs to stay cool. Dr. Denis Andrade, of the Universidade Estadual Paulista in Sao Paulo, “says that the beak is able to cool the bird because heat is transferred into it through the blood, and can then be dissipated into the air.

He says that the bird increases the flow of blood to the beak, which comprises 30 to 50 per cent of the toucan’s surface area, to get rid of more heat.” Scientists have long been perplexed by the mystery of it’s evolutionary purpose. Charles Darwin himself speculated “that the toucan’s beak was used as a sexual advertisement, while other scientists thought that it might be a specialist fruit peeler or visual warning system.”

Src: Toucans’ enormous beaks keep them cool

I like Tanya Morgan a lot so I chose “Cool Breezin” for this post off of their “Sunlighting” album which you can download for free at loudminoritymusic.com. Their new album “Brooklynati” is in stores now. Oh yeah, in case you didn’t know Tanya Morgan is a rap group and I wrote about them here: Does Tanya Morgan Have The Music You’ve Been Missing??? Shout out to Donwill who had this to say about this post:

Yeah, I saved it!

GREEN FACT: Sure he looks small on your cereal box but in real life Toucan Sam probably clocks in at 25 in (63.5 cm) long with a 7.5 in (19 cm) bill and weighs 20 oz (550 g). The Toco toucan is at home in South America’s tropical forests. ~nationalgeographic.com

I wonder why he didn’t have an accent in the commercials? Or why he spells fruit wrong?

FUN FACT: “Kellogg’s* launched Froot Loops* cereal in 1963 with the Toucan Sam character. He wore a towering Carmen Miranda-style hat of fruits.

Toucan Sam has a magical power possessed by no other creature in his jungle: with his nose, he can sniff out the delicious natural orange, lemon, and cherry flavours in Kellogg’s* Froot Loops cereal. He does this time and time again while singing his famous lyric ‘follow my nose, it always knows” ~kelloggs.ca

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