Breeders use 'falcon sex hats' to collect bird semen
An obscure bit of trivia about falcon breeding has left thousands of Twitter users disgusted, concerned, and generally just confused.
With several falcon species becoming endangered in the mid-20th century, falconers needed to get innovative to help the birds breed more frequently. Enter: falcon sex hats.
Breeders now sometimes use special headgear — which they wear atop their own heads — so that male falcons will 'mate' with them and deposit their semen, which the breeders can then use to artificially inseminate a female of the species.
Factoid: Some falcon breeders use 'falcon copulation hats,' which allow the males of the species to 'mate' with their keepers
Really? A London-based content creator named Red Scharlach notified followers of the odd contraption
The odd and disturbing bit of trivia has been popped up here and there on the internet for years, but it reached thousands of Twitter users this week when a London-based content creator named Red Scharlach wrote about it.
She tweeted: 'TRUE FACT OF THE DAY: When falcon breeders want to breed falcons, they wear special falcon sex hats.
'The hat encourages the falcon to shag the breeder's head and collects the falcon sperm, which can then be artificially inseminated.
'I'll say that again: FALCON SEX HATS.'
She went on to point out that these falcon copulation hats can be bought online for as little as £155/$202.
Quickly, the tweet racked up tens of thousands of likes, and both alarmed and amused social media users commented on the odd bit of news.
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Makes sense: They were invented as a way to help falcons breed after they've imprinted on human handlers
How it's done: The holes in the headgear collect falcon semen. That semen can then be used to artificially inseminate a female falcon
'My Falcon Sex Hat brings all the birds to the yard...' joked one.
'But is there a specific reason for it being on their head rather than literally anywhere else?' demanded another.
'Why would they not just put the hat on the floor please?' asked a third.
Several joked that 'falcon sex hat' would make a great band name, while one posted a Harry Potter movie still of a boggart taking the form of Professor Snape in Neville's grandmother's bird hat.
Though the factoid seems a bit wild, it's entirely true. According to Earth Touch News, the hats were invented by falconer Les Boyd in the early 1970s.
At the time, the number of peregrine falcons in North America had decreased dramatically, down to just 324 pairs from what was once as high as 4,000 pairs.
So weird! Alarmed and amused social media users commented on the odd bit of news
Falconers like him tried to breed the birds in captivity, but it wasn't as easy as sticking two falcons in a cage, lighting some candles, and turning on some mood music.
When birds are born, they soon 'imprint' on their parents. But when they're born in captivity, they tend to imprint on their human handlers.
So by the time they reached sexual maturity, their sense of their own species was off — and they'd be uninterested in mating with their own kind.
The hats allowed the birds to mate with their handlers, so to speak. Those handlers mimic falcon noises, and the birds then copulate with them via the hat — which has holes in it to collect semen.
'The imprinted males were extremely easy to work with,' Boyd said. 'Once the semen was on the hat, it could be easily pulled into a syringe, and imprinted females would stand for semen deposit. It was incredibly simple.'
For those still horrified by the idea of people letting birds essentially have sex with their heads, Boyd revealed it could actually be much, much worse.
'Actually one of the simplest ways to get the male to copulate was on the back of one's hand,' he said.
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