Cannibal Caribou, Charming Worms, Strawberry-Flavored Neutrinos

"Eighty-six percent of the antlers we examined showed signs of gnawing, and 99 percent of those gnaw marks were left by caribou." That was the finding that kicked off one of the three weird stories in this episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week — a story about reindeer moms who quite literally store a snack on their heads for later. But before the hosts got to the cannibal caribou, they first had to work through a dancing bird that summons worms, and a subatomic particle that refuses to pick a flavor identity.

The Timberdoodle Two-Step and the Art of Worm Charming

The episode opened with a video of an American woodcock — also known as a timberdoodle, hokempoke, bog sucker, or brush snipe — doing a peculiar little stomp dance. The bird rocks its head and steps rhythmically, looking like "a millennial at a wedding," as one host described it. The question is why. One theory is behavioral aposematism: the dance warns predators that the bird has spotted them, making an ambush less worthwhile. But the more compelling theory, backed by scientific studies, is that the stomping compels earthworms to emerge from the soil via vibration.