#birds

The Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is Now Officially ExtinctThis is a piece of sad news for us.The ivory-billed woodpecker, along with 22 more species has been declared extinct by the U.S. government. Possible reasons behind the avian’s disappearance are too much development, water pollution, logging, competition from invasive species, birds killed for feathers, and animals captured by private collectors.Cornell University bird biologist John Fitzpatrick believes that the declaration was too early after the time, effort, and millions of dollars spent on preservation efforts and searches for the splendid woodpecker. “A bird this iconic, and this representative of the major old-growth forests of the southeast, keeping it on the list of endangered species keeps attention on it, keeps states thinking about managing habitat on the off chance it still exists,” Fitzpatrick said.Image credit: Cornell Lab of Ornithology via AP; AP Photo/Haven Daley#Birds #Extinction #IvoryBilledWoodpecker 

Wild Cockatoos Make Their Own Cutlery Set - a Crowbar, an Ice Pick, and a Spoon to Eat Their Favorite FruitGoffin’s Cockatoos have been compared to 3-year-old humans because of their intelligence. But what 3-year-old has made their own cutlery set? Goffin’s Cockatoos, members of the parrot family have been observed by scientists to be crafting the equivalent of a crowbar, an icepick, and a spoon to open their favorite fruits. This is the first time that a bird has been seen making and using tools, a trait only known in humans, chimpanzees, and capuchin monkeys.Mark O’Hara of Messerli Research Institute discovered this behavior when he was working with wild but captive birds in a research aviary on Yamdena Island in Indonesia. “I’d just turned away, and when I looked back, one of the birds was making and using tools,” said O’Hara. In captivity, these birds have solved complex puzzle boxes and made rake-like tools to retrieve objects. Other birds like hyacinth macaws and New Caledonian crows also make tools for their food, but not a set of tools.O’Hara and his team went to this cockatoo’s home on Indonesia’s Tanimbar Islands for a new study and spent almost 900 hours looking up to watch cockatoos feed but didn’t witness tool use. This led the team to capture a small flock of 15 individuals and bring them to their research aviary to study for several months before setting them free.A male cockatoo bit away a sea mango tree’s fruit then quickly cut off a small branch from a tree inside the aviary. With quick bites into the stump, he formed a wedge-shaped tool. While holding the fruit with his left foot and resting on his right, he used his tongue to fit the wedge into the pit’s fissure, opening the pit. Next, a sharp splinter was used to pierce the parchment-like interior protecting the seeds. Lastly, he made a third tool to be used to spoon out the seeds.Most of the cockatoos are younger birds who watched the older birds’ actions. “We know they learn socially from each other in captivity,” said Berenika Mioduszewska, a comparative psychologist who co-led and co-authored the study.#Cockatoos #Parrots #Aviary #Birds #Tools

Animals Cope With Global Warming By Changing Their ShapesWith the world slowly getting hotter each moment that passes by, how do animals cope with the heat? Unlike we humans who have air-conditioners which could keep an enclosed environment cool, animals don’t have this revolutionary piece of technology. So how are they able to withstand the scorching heat? To solve this temperature problem, animals have resorted to “changing the sizes and shapes of certain body parts”.The animals’ shapes-shifting changes make sense, researchers say. In biology, an established concept called Bergmann's rule states that creatures that live in colder climates tend to be larger and thicker than those closer to the equator—to better conserve heat. The rule is named after Carl Bergmann, a nineteenth century biologist who first described the pattern in 1847. Thirty years later, another biologist, Joel Asaph Allen further expanded the concept, stating that animals that adapted to cold climates have shorter limbs and bodily appendages—to keep the warmth in. For similar thermoregulatory reasons, the reverse is also commonly true—in hotter climates warm-blooded animals’ appendages become larger, relative to their body size.The team of researchers from Deakin University in Australia and Brock University in Canada found that, since 1871, parrots have enlarged their beak surface by up to 10 percent, while roundleaf bats have very slightly increased their wing size since the 1950s.Learn more about this study over at Smithsonian Magazine.(Image Credit: Alexandra McQueen)#GlobalWarming #ClimateChange #AnimalAdaptation #Adaptation #Birds #Bats