How Do “Jesus Birds” Appear To Walk On Water?

The animal world is full of what appear to be miracles: a Brazilian boa giving birth without being near another snake; fish that rain down from the sky; and who could forget the ferret that somehow survived a 100-minute cycle in a washing machine? There’s one group of birds, however, that likes to go for an old classic when it comes to miraculous behavior.

Those birds are the jacanas. Their miracle? Walking on water, or at least seeming to do so, which has unsurprisingly earned them the nickname “Jesus birds”.

Found in tropical regions of Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas, the various species of jacana make their homes in water anywhere from swamps and marshes to lakes and lagoons, appearing to effortlessly glide across them as they go about their birdy business.

But sadly, there are no water walking-based miracles going on here – unless you consider physics and walking on vegetation to be a miracle, that is.

They’re actually walking along lily pads (which has given them their other nickname: lily trotters) and other water vegetation floating on the water’s surface. These plants may well have a bit of a water on them, so at a glance, it looks as though a jacana really is walking on water.

Still, if we attempted to walk over a lake by hopping between lily pads, it’d end in a quick trip underwater. How, then, are jacanas able to do it?

The answer lies in their freakishly long toes , which allow them to spread their weight across the vegetation they’re walking on, stopping them from sinking. Readying them for a life on the water, jacanas have these big ol’ tootsies from birth, providing us with delightfully gangly, if a little Freddy Krueger-esque, fluffy chicks to look at.

However, life is not all lily pads and larking about for baby jacanas – the waters below contain plenty of other animals that see them as tasty little snacks. Luckily, as the clip from PBS’s Nature shows below, dad is quickly there to the rescue.

Male birds are able to scoop up their young beneath their wings and carry them a short distance away to safety. Though they don’t fly whilst doing so – jacanas aren’t the greatest of fliers, only spending short bouts of time up in the air – it’s still quite the spectacle.

That’s because the chicks aren’t fully hidden; their lanky legs stick out below, which, if you didn’t know what was going on, actually looks reasonably terrifying.