Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

Are there real-life versions of the Angry Birds? What inspired Rovio to make their angry birds the way they are? Did they model the birds after nature in either look or function? These are questions worth answering; if you’ve played the game, you might wonder where all the angry birds came from. The real angry birds!

Red Angry Bird

Our first contestant, the bird you get first in Angry Birds, is Mr. Red. We speculate that he might actually be a Blue-throated Brown Sunbird, or perhaps Gould’s Sunbird. From the round, rotund shape of his body, we definitely know it’s from Aethopyga:

Is the red angry bird actually a sunbird?

The Angry Blue Splitters

The blue flycatcher known as Plumbeous Water-redstart, or red-tailed robin, is a kind of water bird which loves to feed on insects. They are territorial and have a red tail, a flash of contrasting colours:

What a beautiful bluebird!

The Yellow Bird

I think this is most like a baby Martin Branch Swallow, with its yellow coloration, angry face, and wide beak. In fact, the swallows and the triangle of the “little yellow bird” have something in common, a certain “hard acceleration” property. Swallows have one of the best flying air technique of all the birds, by far the fastest.

Fly fast, yellow Swallows!

Fat Black Bird

Perfectly coal black, the Common Blackbird is definitely the model for Angry Birds. The real life bird is notable for mimicry of other sounds, and is a sly trixster.

Serious business, the Blackbird

White Egg-Bomber

The white angry bird which drops explosive eggs is probably a Snow Bunting, a sort of mottled white and brown bird which lives in naturally cold climes. Sometimes they’re called “snowflake.”

Or maybe it’s a Chicken, IDK

Pictures and the idea from 如果愤怒的小鸟要拍电影; we thought it worth bringing some of the concept to English too.

It all started when one of my friends liked the Facebook page for a book called The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil. Being an information omnivore, I clicked through to see what the provocative title was about (you can head over and read the Amazon reviews to figure that one out). When I landed on the Facebook page, thanks to their new “Related Global Posts” section, I saw this comment:

“power corrupls absolule power corrupls absolulely”

Made by Kim, a Pennsylvania native, this post shows a surprising lack of the letter “t”. Basic letter frequency analysis shows that almost all missing Ts have been replaced with Ls. Curious as to why this might be, I sent her the following message:

Hi Kim, I saw your post about the book the Lucifer Effect (www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lucifer-Effect/106010182772704) and noticed that you write without any of the letter “t”. Broken keyboard, or is it something about that letter? Just curious, Elliott

And then I got a reply! Actually, a series of them!

broken keyboard although some days t shows upt i didnt gettur other message tried to get on friends list butt would not allow me was curious of what u wrote today t s just keep coming crazy

lhanks no 2 day

i am very curious on message i somehow losl whal did iil say

And I ended this bit of oddness with:

Aww–no worries. Good luck with the broken keyboard!

From the Smoking Gun comes a piece of testimony from Christopher Poole, 4chan’s founder moot, full of lovely gems such as:

Q. And the term “rickroll” you said it tries to make people go to a site where they think it is going to be one thing, but it is a video of Rick Astley, is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. He was some kind of singer?
A. Yes.
Q. It’s a joke?
A. Yes.

You should just be happy I don’t autoplay this: