When it comes to strange and bizarre birds, the Greater Bird-of-Paradise takes the cake.

Its unusual display of feathers is interesting to look at, and if you add pure black to it, it becomes mesmerizing. The color of its feathers are called vantablack because they are so dark that they have almost no reflectance of light. This makes it seem like the feathers are a deep dark hole as they unfurl into an elliptical shape.

There are many Bird-of-Paradise variants, but how did they get such a strange name? These birds were assumed to have come from paradise and never touched the Earth until their death, so they were called the Bird-of-Paradise.

This bird’s deep dark color is so unusual, some companies are actually trying to mimic it- BMW has created a car color of vantablack and the U.S. military has been experimenting with its use!

Maybe this bird of paradise knows something that we don’t. As Roald Dahl so eloquently put it, “The greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”