Nature Geoscience (2012) - Mystery behind Hitchcock's birds
Details
- article: Mystery behind Hitchcock's birds
- author(s): Claudia R. Benitez-Nelson & Mark D. Ohman & David L. Garrison & Sibel Bargu & Mary W. Silver
- journal: Nature Geoscience (01/Jan/2012)
- issue: volume 5, issue 1, page 2
- DOI: 10.1038/ngeo1360
- journal ISSN: 1752-0894
- publisher: Nature Publishing Group
- keywords: The Birds (1963)
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Abstract
On 18 August 1961, a Californian newspaper reported that thousands of “crazed seabirds pelted the shores of North Monterey Bay, California” regurgitating anchovies. Soon after reading the report (Supplementary Fig. S1), local visitor Alfred Hitchcock was inspired to produce his famous thriller The Birds. Three decades later, in 1991, another mass poisoning occurred in the same area — this time, of fish-eating, disoriented and dying brown pelicans. But on this occasion the culprit was identified: the pelicans had ingested domoic acid, a neurotoxin that is produced by the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia. Large quantities of this diatom, and the associated toxin, were found in the stomachs of fish in the region. It has been suggested that diatom-generated domoic acid was also responsible for the 1961 event1, but direct evidence has been lacking. Here we show that plankton samples from the 1961 poisoning contained toxin-producing Pseudo-nitzschia, supporting the contention that these toxic diatoms were responsible for the bird frenzy that motivated Hitchcock's thriller.
