Titmice and their closest bird kin engage in some weird behavior. All sneaky-like, these birds would land on unsuspecting mammals and then pluck out some hair from their targets.
When Jeffrey Brawn and Henry Pollock once participated in a spring bird count in central Illinois, Brawn noticed a titmouse plucking out some hair from a sleeping raccoon. Surprisingly, the raccoon didn't wake up. Intrigued, Brawn decided to study the matter.
As the study authors consulted literature, they only found 11 instances of the behavior. When they checked YouTube, however, they found dozens of examples. Some of these birds even pluck some hair out of mammals who are wide awake.
The question is, why would these birds risk their lives? The authors note possible reasons. The first reason was the birds needed some insulation in their nests. The second was that the odor associated with the mammal could deter predators. Another possible reason could be the hair capable of repelling parasites, a threat to chick survival.
The authors have called this behavior kleptotrichy, from the Greek words "klepto" and "trich", which mean "theft" and "hair", respectively.
The paper, published in the journal Ecology, is titled, “What the pluck? Theft of mammal hair by birds is an overlooked but common behavior with fitness implications." It is available online.
Learn more about the study over at Illinois News Bureau.
(Image Credit: Texas Backyard Wildlife)
#Titmouse #Kleptotrichy #Ornithology #BirdBehavior #AnimalBehavior #Weird