Friday, April 29, 2005

There is Trickery Afoot (A-Wing, Actually)

Maybe if I were more of a naturalist I wouldn't think this is so cool, but I do. A paper in Science describes an interesting feature of Horsfield's hawk-cuckoos. This species of bird is a brood parasite--the eggs are laid in another bird's nest and the host bird's eggs and young are evicted from the nest. The parasitic bird tricks the host bird in to feeding it. Some types of parasitic birds make intense feeding calls to trick the host parent into thinking there are more hungry mouths to feed than there actually are, and thus increase the amount of food delivered. The Horsfield's hawk-cuckoo uses a different strategy.

Continue Reading


Rather than make a lot of noise, this little bird uses a colored patch on its wing to trick the host bird, visually, into thinking there are additional mouths to feed (see picture). Host birds have even been seen to actually try to put food into this decoy mouth. The authors tried painting the patch on the wing black and observed a drop in the rate of food delivery.

Nature is full of trickery in the competition for survival.


0 comments:

  © Blogger templates The Professional Template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP