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Sunday, February 28, 2021
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City Birds Smarter Than Country Birds

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"birds are smart"

Bullfinches living in the city are smarter than the ones in the countryside

STATES CHRONICLE – People have always been making comparisons between urban life and rural life, from infrastructure to social life and education. Of course, all of these comparisons were made regarding humans, but now a team of researchers has decided to see how birds in urban areas differ from birds in rural areas.

The researchers from the McGill University have published their study in the journal Behavioral Ecology. They looked into the behavior of Barbados bullfinches after one of the researchers saw that the birds in the city were keeping watch at a restaurant trying to steal food.

They looked into certain characteristics such as color discrimination, boldness, immunity, neophobia and problem-solving skills. It turned out that the bullfinches are not sacrificing anything by living in the city, but quite the opposite. The scientists found that the birds living in urban areas were better at problem-solving than the ones from the countryside.

What was more surprising was that the city bullfinches actually had a better immunity than the ones in rural areas. The urban birds were better at everything, from problem-solving, to immunity and boldness. They were also more fearful of new objects but just as good at color-discrimination.

To figure out all these things, researchers put the birds through a series of tests which included the birds having to figure out where and how to get food in an easy way. They had the options of sliding jars using long handles, distinguishing between buttons that were colored differently. The birds living in the city had slightly better results than the ones living in the countryside, maybe because they had to adjust to the urban jungle and are now more experienced.

However, birds have been proving to be very smart lately, or, at least, a lot smarter than we previously thought. Recent studies showed that crows, one of the smartest species of bird, has besides a very sharp memory and the ability to pass on knowledge to their offspring, also the capacity to make and use tools to help them feed and get nutrients from their food.

All in all, birds are definitely smarter than we thought, and the ones that are urbanized seem to be not only more experienced but have also developed a better immunity and have become bolder.

Image source: www.bing.com

Hummingbirds Adapted Taste Receptors to Sweetness, Unlike Other Birds

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Birds cannot taste sweetness, at least chickens do not, as it was first discovered in 2004 when the bird’s genome was fully sequenced. After checking other birds as well, researchers discovered that birds lack the T1R2 gene responsible for identifying sweetness.

Researchers from Harvard University and University of Tokyo teamed up to understand what makes the hummingbird special. Hummingbirds adapted taste receptors to sense sugars, as they feed on nectar all day long. They are some of the fastest birds and their helicopter like flying style requires a lot of energy. When the nectar they are feeding on does not contain enough sugar, the birds move to another source of food.

But as their other relatives, hummingbirds cannot taste sweetness, it was thought. Despite lacking the T1R2 gene, hummingbirds managed to find a way of achieving their goal. Usually T1R2 and T1R3 proteins combine to help our tongs identify sugary content. Hummingbirds do it differently.

Because they lack an important gene which produces the sugar identification protein, hummingbirds appealed to another combination. T1R1 and TiR3 combined in the case of these birds to help them identify sugar. The change occurred sometimes between 40 and 72 million years ago, after which hummingbirds branched in around 300 species in the Americas.

Animals never seize to amaze us. Just a couple of days ago, another team of scientists managed to understand how do geckos climb walls.

Hummingbirds adapted taste receptors to sweetness and they get angry when they do not get it

Researchers cloned the taste receptor to from chickens, hummingbirds and swifts. Afterward they tested the receptors’ responses to amino-acids and sugar. Moreover, they mixed chicken and hummingbird taste receptors to understand the receptor’s evolution in time. In the last 40 million years, hummingbirds changed their taste genes 19 times. In their tests, hummingbirds reacted to carbohydrates and sugar, but less so to amino-acids.

Hummingbirds Adapted taste Receptors to sense sugar.

“If you look at the structure of the receptor, it involved really dramatic changes over its entire surface to accomplish this complex feat,” Liberies said in the statement. “This dramatic change in the evolution of a new behavior is a really powerful example of how you can explain evolution on a molecular level.”

Further outdoors testing showed that hummingbirds can easily identify sugar. After offering sweet products, water and synthetic sugars and recording their feast on tape, researchers observed some patterns. Even if hummingbirds adapted taste receptors to distinguish sugar, they only ate natural and artificial sugars. They were not keen on synthetic sugars and water.

Dinosaurs Constantly Shrank to Evolve into Birds

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Recently we covered a news about dinosaur fossils found in China. While fossils are found on a regular basis, the new discovery entailed a massive debate. According to the researchers, the fossils displayed signs of feathers, leading them to conclude that most, if not all dinosaurs, might have sported feathers.

Today another news about dinosaurs and feathers just came in. According to new analysis, scientists reached the conclusion that dinosaurs constantly shrank until they turned into birds. The whole transformation lasted for a very long time for a specific type of dinosaurs, the theropods. We are talking here about more than 50 million years.

Four researchers from Australia, Italy and Hungary adapted a method to analyze 1549 skeletal characters in fossils. Theropods, according to the researchers, became smaller and smaller as they went through at least 12 consecutive internodes in their evolution. Until they become the birds we all know today, the theropods went from 25st 9lb to 1.8lb. The theropods adapted evolutionary much faster than other dinosaurs and were the only dinosaur to use shrinking as a survival strategy.

More than 100 fossils helped researchers conclude that dinosaurs constantly shrank

The analysis led by Mike Lee from Adelaide University, Australia, used a tool borrowed from virus research. BEAST (Bayesian evolutionary analysis sampling tree) is a software used to trace the viruses’ ancestors. The researchers looked at 120 species and fed all the fossils’ characteristics to BEAST. The theropods developed avian characteristics like wings and wishbones at a faster rate than other dinosaurs adapted. The small size helped the animals reorganize their bodies for flying. The theropods produced very inventive adaptations. Ultimately, the transformation process which started 200 million years ago helped theropods survive the meteorite impact that killed many other dinosaur lineages.

Dinosaurs Constantly Shrank as an evolutionary adaptation.

Professor Michael Benton, from the University of Bristol, commented the discovery for BBC. “The functions of each special feature of birds changed over time – feathers first for insulation, and later co-opted for flight; early reductions in body size perhaps for other reasons, and later they were small enough for powered flight; improvements in sense of sight and enlargement of brain – even a small improvement in these is advantageous”, Benton explained.

The results of the Meta analysis concluding that dinosaurs constantly shrank were published under the title “Sustained miniaturization and anatomical innovation in the dinosaurian ancestors of birds” in Science Journal.

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