Not to brag or anything, but when you search on Wikipedia for “psittacofulvin” and “Bacillus licheniformis,” a scientific paper I co-authored is cited in the sources. How about that? I think it’s pretty nifty.

Yeah Ohio Wesleyan University and degrading parrot feathers!

(Click on the links to read articles about our research.)

The degrading parrot feather crew at the North American Ornithology Conference in Veracruz, Mexico in 2006: (left to right) Dr. Kevin McGraw, Max Schroeder, Jenna (Sroka) Smith, Lauren Smith, and Dr. Jed Burtt.

In case you were wondering (and I know you were), psittacofulvins are the red, orange, and yellow pigments in parrot feathers. Bacillus licheniformis is a soil bacterium that degrades bird feathers. Click on the green links up in the first paragraph and read about it on Wikipedia.

If you’d like to read this world-famous paper, here it is:

Colourful Parrot Feathers Resist Bacterial Degradation

Degrading parrot feathers from our experiment. In case you were wondering, cutting up a very precise amount of differently colored parrot feathers and sticking them in vials is a rather delicate and tedious task, and generally ends with there being bits of feather stuck to every available surface.