To get inside the head of a homing pigeon as it navigates towards its roost, researchers turned a flock of pigeons into cutting-edge techno-birds. The scientists outfitted the birds with “neurologgers” consisting of an electroencephalograph (EEG) to read the bird’s brain waves and a GPS tracker to record its location; by matching a bird’s position to its brain activity, the researchers could determine the bird’s reaction to the landscape below it. They found that, just like humans, the pigeons use visual landmarks in their navigation.
How homing pigeons find their way back to a starting point is not completely known. Studies have shown that the birds variously use the position of the Sun and the Earth’s magnetic field as a compass, and sense of smell and visual cues as navigation aids. But the use of visual cues has been difficult to study, because if a bird flies over a landmark and doesn’t change its course, it’s impossible to know whether the bird has not perceived the cue or is ignoring it [The New York Times].
A husband and wife team that for 35 years has researched finches’ evolutionary responses to environmental changes have won the prestigious Kyoto Prize in the basic sciences category. Peter and Rosemary Grant, both emeritus professors at Princeton University, have studied finches that lives on the Galapagos Islands for decades and will share the $515,000 prize. The Kyoto Prize is a Japanese award similar to the Nobel Prize.
The two evolutionary biologists devoted their careers to furthering Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Both 72, the Grants have been traveling regularly since 1973 to the Galápagos, the remote islands west of Ecuador. There, they have painstakingly recorded the characteristics of numerous varieties of finches [Philadelphia Inquirer]. Darwin stumbled upon these finches during his famous tour of the Galapagos Islands in 1835, later chronicled in his book The Voyage of the Beagle.
Most paleontologists believe that a group of dinosaurs evolved into today’s birds, but in trying to understand that gradual process they’ve been bedeviled by some details. Yesterday, researchers announced that they may have solved one of those small conundrums. A fossilized dinosaur found in China appears to settle the matter of exactly how the bones in dinosaurs’ feet evolved into the digits hidden in bird wings.
The newly discovered ceratosaur belonged to a group of dinosaurs called theropods, which are thought to have given rise to modern birds and which included the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex. But unlike its T. rex cousin, this ceratosaur appears to have been a vegetarian. Says study coauthor James Clark: “It’s a really weird animal - it’s got no teeth, had a beak and a very long neck, and very wimpy forelimbs…. Then when we looked closely at the hand, we noticed it was relevant to a very big question in palaeontology” [BBC News].
More than 220 years since a ship wrecked on the rocks surrounding a remote Aleutian island, biologists believe they may have finally cleaned up the resulting mess. Rats have ruled the island since 1780, when they jumped off a sinking Japanese ship and terrorized all but the largest birds on the island [Reuters]. The voracious rodents feed on bird eggs and even chicks and small adult birds, and they so dominated the tiny island that it was given the name Rat Island. Biologists embarked on an ambitious effort to wipe out the rats last year, and now say they may have accomplished their task–but the campaign may have resulted in some avian casualties.
Nine months after scattering poisoned pellets across the island, biologists say they haven’t spotted any remaining rats, but they have found the carcasses of 186 glaucous-winged gulls and 41 bald eagles. U.S. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Bruce Woods said it’s unlikely carnivorous eagles ate the Rodenticide grain pellets, but they may have devoured some dead rats that had consumed them. “Eagles are scavengers of opportunity,” he said. “Rats don’t make up a big part of their diet naturally, but if meat is available, they’re going to take it” [Anchorage Daily News].
A hummingbird in love can perform aerial stunts that put fighter pilots to shame. In a new study, researcher Christopher Clark captured the male hummingbird’s daring dives with cameras that can capture 500 frames per second. To get the footage, Clark set out a caged female, or even a stuffed female on a stick, to inspire birds to dive right in front of his video cameras [Science News].
In the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Clark observed the Anna’s hummingbird, a tiny bird native to the American southwest. In the male’s courtship display he dives down dramatically with his wings pressed to his sides, and then dramatically stretches out his wings and tail feathers to break his momentum and bring him swooping back up into the sky. Clark says that the maneuver sets some records. When measured relative to the length of their bodies, the birds’ top speed, he said, was “greater than [that] of a fighter jet with its afterburners on, or the space shuttle during atmospheric re-entry” [BBC News].
The lumbering, long-necked dinosaurs known as sauropods are a staple of natural history museums and gift shops, but a new debate has broken out that challenges the poses of the museums’ life-sized replicas and the toy shops’ plastic figurines. The mighty sauropods Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus are commonly positioned with their long necks stretched before them, but a controversial new study argues that they actually stretched their necks up to the treetops. If sauropods did indeed hold their heads aloft like giraffes, some would have stood almost 50 feet tall.
For the new study, published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, paleontologist Mike Taylor and his colleagues took the straight-forward approach of studying the x-rays of 10 different groups of vertebrate animals. Says Taylor: “Unless sauropods carried their heads and necks differently from every living vertebrate, we have to assume the base of their neck was curved strongly upwards. In some sauropods this would have meant a graceful S-curve to the neck, and a look different from the recreations we are used to seeing today” [The Australian].
Four rooks by the names of Cook, Connelly, Fry, and Monroe have upped estimates of birds’ intelligence by mastering a series of challenges in which they had to use tools to get tasty worms. Researchers say that the birds’ skills rivalled those of well-known tool users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows…. “The study shows the creativity and insight that rooks have when they solve problems,” [BBC News], says study coauthor Nathan Emery. Their abilities are all the more remarkable, researchers say, because rooks are not known to use tools in the wild.
In the laboratory tests, researchers devised a series of challenges in which the rooks had to figure out how to release food from glass tubes. The first featured a worm on a platform that would collapse, allowing it to be eaten if a stone were nudged into the tube. All four birds completed the task. They also chose stones of appropriate shape for tubes of differing sizes.The rooks were also quick to realise that long, thin stones would fit in every tube, regardless of its diameter, as long as it went in lengthways [The Times]. But picking up stones was a modest accomplishment compared to what came next.
If you get on a mockingbird’s enemy list, expect to be dive-bombed every time you come within the bird’s sight. That’s one lesson that can be taken from a new study which proved that mockingbirds can recognize individual people, and attack those who have bothered their nests in the past. While ornithologists knew that certain highly intelligent birds like parrots and crows can recognize humans in a lab setting, they were surprised to find similar behavior in a songbird living in the wild. This paper is “a beauty,” says John Fitzpatrick, an ornithologist at Cornell University. “It’s amazing what a bird brain can do” [ScienceNOW Daily News].
The study was prompted by a series of bird attacks. A graduate student involved in research on bird nesting noticed that when she would make repeat visits to peoples’ yards the birds would alarm and attack her, while they would ignore people gardening or doing other things nearby…. Indeed, it seemed they could even recognize her car, and she had to start parking around the corner [AP]. So the researchers designed an experiment to investigate whether the birds really could identify an individual person.
It may be the first example of a serious scientific study being launched by a viral video. Neuroscientist Aniruddh Patel was astonished when someone e-mailed him a link to a YouTube video of a sulfur-crested cockatoo named Snowball dancing to the Backstreet Boys.”I said, you know, this is much more than just a cute pet trick. This is potentially scientifically very important,” recalls Patel [NPR].
Researchers had previously assumed that only humans move in time to a beat, but Snowball appeared to bob and rock to the rhythm just like any dancer. But Patel still wondered if the tail-shaking cockatoo had simply learned one dance routine that happened to synchronize to the Backstreet Boys song. For his study, published in Current Biology, Patel made slowed down and sped up versions of the song, and played them back to the bird while Snowball’s owner videotaped the reaction. They found that Snowball did adjust his moves to match the tempo. At slower speeds the bird swayed rhythmically from side to side, and when the beats came fast and furious, the bird erupted into rapid head-bobbing.
Egyptian health officials have just reported two deaths from bird flu within days of each other. The dangerous virus variant H5N1 struck down a six-year-old boy and a young woman, bringing the total death toll in Egypt to 25. While bird flu experts note that Egypt has seen a surge in human cases in recent months, with 16 confirmed since the start of the year, compared to seven cases between January 1 and April 17 last year [Reuters], they also say that the Egyptian people’s level of alarm is out of proportion to the threat.
Rumors have appeared in the Egyptian media that the virus is circulating widely, and that some people get “silent infections” which show no symptoms, but still allow them to pass on the virus. The rumors have been fueled by the pattern of recent infections: Many of the infected patients have been toddlers, leading to the belief that stronger adults are also infected but simply show no symptoms. Although thousands of Egyptians have rushed their children to hospitals this flu season, there is no evidence yet of asymptomatic avian flu cases or any significant mutation in the H5N1 virus. “Right now, it’s all hot air,” said Dr. Robert G. Webster, a flu expert…. “I hope to hell it’s not happening, because it would mean the virus is adapting to humans. But there’s not a shred of data” [The New York Times].
While the H5N1 virus rarely infects people, the looming fear is that the virus may mutate into a form that can be transmitted easily from person to person, which could spark a deadly pandemic. However, an outbreak of swine flu across the world from Egypt, in Southern California, has reminded people of the hazards of overreacting before all the information is in.
Researchers have learned the universal secret behind the graceful, aerial turns executed by everything from insects to cockatoos. And it’s a surprisingly simple process: To turn left, all a bird has to do is flap its right wing a little bit harder than the left wing. To end the turn, the bird simply returns to flapping its wings in unison [Discovery News]. Researchers hope to duplicate the simple set of motions to create more nimble and acrobatic flying robots.
Though the dynamics probably can’t work at large scales — building-sized robotic birds won’t ever be as agile as a swallow — they could be harnessed in small drones used by explorers or the military. Compared to the average hummingbird or fruit fly, such craft are now clumsy and unstable. “The results will inform all future research into maneuvering flight in animals and biomimetic flying robots” [Wired], wrote biomechanicist Bret Tobalske in a commentary.
Young chickens just a few days old can count and perform basic arithmetic, according to a fluffy new study. Researchers manipulated objects that the chicks had formed an attachment to, moving the objects behind little screens, and found that the observant young birds kept track of where the objects were. In effect, the chicks were solving simple math problems like “4 – 2 = 2.”
While some adult animals, including primates and dogs, have been found to have an understanding of basic math, researchers had not previously demonstrated numerical abilities in any young animals (except for humans). Karen Wynn, who has reported evidence of numerical skills in human babies, points out that the chicks haven’t had a chance to learn or develop much. “This work, then, is a compelling existence proof that numerical understanding comprises a built-in system of unlearned knowledge,” Wynn says [Science News].
A migrating bird has found a quick and effective way to boost its endurance for a grueling task, according to a new study, and it’s a tactic that would make human marathon runners jealous–provided they like seafood.
Like all migrating birds, the tiny sandpiper instinctively heads to warmer climates for the winter. The [1,900-mile] trek from the birds’ summer home in the Canadian Arctic to the South American coast includes 3 days of nonstop flight over open water. The journey is so arduous it can kill younger or weaker members of the flock [ScienceNOW Daily News]. Sandpipers prepare for the flight in a number of ways: Autumn’s shorter days and cooler weather trigger hormonal changes in the birds, causing their stomachs to stretch to hold more food. The birds also start flying more, as if exercising for their upcoming ordeal.
But the final, and arguably most important step seems to be a stop at the Bay of Fundy, where sandpipers spend two weeks gorging on mud shrimp, which have some of the highest levels of omega-3 fatty acids of any marine animal. Researchers say the feast drastically increases the birds’ endurance by making their muscles use oxygen more efficiently. These omega-3 fatty acids are the same fats shown to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and lower blood pressure in humans [CBC].
The Gouldian finch female has a neat trick for maximizing her offspring’s chance of survival: If she mates with a male who is a poor match for her genetically, she increases the proportion of male chicks in the resulting brood. In a new study, researchers say they’ve found unprecedented evidence that these birds can exert control over the gender of their offspring.
The endangered finch, native to the northern savannahs of Australia, can have either a black or red head, and the two different “morphs” have significant genetic differences, lead researcher Sarah Pryke says. “Gouldian finches wear their genes on their head so it is easy for a female to assess the genetic suitability of the male,” she says [Australian Broadcasting Corporation]. The birds prefer to mate with males that have the same head coloring, as chicks from a mismatched mating - particularly the females - are weaker and more likely to die very early [BBC News].
The birds of America are in trouble, and those living in Hawaiian paradise are the worst off, according to a dire report issued by the U.S. Interior Department. The State of the Birds report spreads the alarming news that one-third of bird species across the nation are endangered, threatened, or in serious decline due to habitat loss, polluted water, invasive species, and disease, says the study. Climate change will make things worse, and work is urgently needed to prevent “a global tragedy” of bird loss, the report added [The New York Times].
Bird species native to Hawaii, an isolated ecosystem, are particularly at risk, with 31 species currently listed as endangered. “That is the epicenter of extinctions and near-extinctions,” said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, which helped produce the study. “Hawaii is (a) borderline ecological disaster.” Hawaii’s native birds are threatened by the destruction of their habitats by invasive plant species and feral animals like pigs, goats and sheep. Diseases, especially those borne by mosquitoes, are another killer [AP]. Researchers say that 71 bird species that were found only on Hawaii have gone extinct since humans first settled the islands.
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To get inside the head of a homing pigeon as it navigates towards its roost, researchers turned a flock of pigeons into cutting-edge techno-birds. The scientists outfitted the birds with “neurologgers” consisting of an electroencephalograph (EEG) to read the bird’s brain waves and a GPS tracker to record its location; by matching a bird’s position to its brain activity, the researchers could determine the bird’s reaction to the landscape below it. They found that, just like humans, the pigeons use visual landmarks in their navigation.
A husband and wife team that for 35 years has researched finches’ 
Most paleontologists believe that a group of 
More than 220 years since a ship wrecked on the rocks surrounding a remote Aleutian island, biologists believe they may have finally cleaned up the resulting mess. Rats have ruled the island since 1780, when they jumped off a sinking Japanese ship and terrorized all but the largest birds on the island [
A hummingbird in love can perform aerial stunts that put fighter pilots to shame. In a new study, researcher Christopher Clark captured the male hummingbird’s daring dives with cameras that can capture 500 frames per second. To get the footage, Clark set out a caged female, or even a stuffed female on a stick, to inspire birds to dive right in front of his video cameras [
The lumbering, long-necked 
Four rooks by the names of Cook, Connelly, Fry, and Monroe have upped estimates of birds’ 
If you get on a mockingbird’s enemy list, expect to be dive-bombed every time you come within the 
Egyptian health officials have just reported two deaths from 
Researchers have learned the universal secret behind the graceful, aerial turns executed by everything from 
Young chickens just a few days old can count and perform basic 
A migrating 
The Gouldian finch female has a neat trick for maximizing her offspring’s chance of survival: If she 
The 
