Avian Ancestors: Dinosaurs That Learned To fly Finding a new species Anzu wylieli's story starts about a decade ago with paleontologist Tyler Lyson now at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural history.
which are closely related to birds. The dinosaur is also part of an oviraptorosaur subgroup called the caenagnathids
and stealth to take down deer peccary monkeys birds frogs fish alligators and small rodents. If wild food is scarce these large cats will also hunt domestic livestock.
Often they eat birds small mammals lizards eggs carrion and other snakes They slither through the wilderness silently following their prey until they are ready to attack.
In addition to being a tasty nutritional supplement the algae may serve as camouflage against predators from above such as the Harpy eagle.
and birds though there have been reports of mambas found with whole parrots or full-grown cobras in their stomachs.
Though the amount of water reaching the estuary habitat where river mixes with sea will likely be said small Zamora it could help the hundreds of bird species who nest in the Gulf
and bird eggs when they get the chance. To eat they hold their food in their front paws
#The Surprising Reason Hummingbirds Love Sweets Nectar-slurping hummingbirds clearly have a taste for sweets
but they shouldn't. Like all other birds they lack sweet-taste receptors on their palates
However new research reveals why hummingbirds feast freely on nectar: At some point in their evolution the birds transformed a taste receptor that's typically used to detect savory
or umami flavors into one that's used to taste sweets instead. Hummingbirds are constantly wavering between a sugar rush and starvation.
Their metabolisms are hyperactive their hearts can beat 20 times a second and they often need to eat more than their body weight in food each day to stay alive.
Beautiful Hummingbirds of the World The small birds eat the occasional insect but they largely subsist on nectar from flowers
which is not a typical source of food for most other birds. As a result hummingbirds have been able to carve out a distinct environmental niche.
The birds can now be found throughout North and South america in habitats ranging from high-altitude mountains in the Andes to tropical rainforests
and they're quite diverse. They have split into more than 300 species in the estimated 42 million years
Scientists have been puzzled by the fact that hummingbirds maintain such a sugary diet without a sweet-taste receptor.
But after the chicken genome was sequenced in 2004 researchers noticed the birds lacked the gene that encodes T1r2 a crucial component of the sweet-taste receptor.
This same pattern was seen in other bird genomes. If a species is missing one of those two parts then the species can't taste sweet at all said Maude Baldwin a doctoral student of evolutionary biology at Harvard university and one of the researchers on the study.
But in bird genomes scientists never even found a trace of a pseudogene for a sweet tooth Baldwin told Live Science.
To figure out what made hummingbirds like sweets despite their lack of the sweet-taste receptor Baldwin and colleagues cloned the genes for the T1r1-T1r3 taste receptors from omnivorous chickens insectivorous swifts and nectivorous hummingbirds.
The researchers then tested how the taste-receptor proteins produced by these genes reacted to different flavors in a cell culture.
For chickens and swifts the receptor had a strong reaction to the amino acids behind umami flavors.
The hummingbird receptor on the other hand was stimulated only weakly by umami flavors but it did responded strongly to the sweet flavors of carbs the researchers found.
and colleagues made taste-receptor hybrids using different parts of the chicken and hummingbird receptors.
but the researchers suspect there are more mutations that contributed to the change in hummingbirds. Further research could eventually show where this change for hummingbirds arose in the evolutionary process
and how other nectivores like orioles and honeyeaters developed a taste for sweets. It's still not clear why birds lost their sweet receptor in the first place
but perhaps it was due to the loss of sweets in their diet. Birds are the descendants of carnivorous dinosaurs so maybe this gene was lost early on because of the diet of their ancestors Baldwin said.
That would be very cool but we're still not sure. The findings were detailed today (Aug 21) in the journal Science.
Follow Megan Gannon on Twitter and Google+.+Follow us@livescience Facebook& Google+.+Original article on Live Science o
A serendipitous encounter between Patricia Wright then a social worker and an owl monkey in a New york city pet store in 1968 ultimately inspired Wright to reinvent herself eventually becoming an award-winning Ph d. scientist
Owl Monkeys Are Caring Fathers Too Wright partners with Malagasy villagers to develop conservation strategies that are scientifically sound
Madagascar which is currently playing throughout the U s. Also Wright recently described her early research on owl monkeys
#Parrot Facts: Habits, Habitat & Species Parrots are members of the Order psittaciformes which includes more than 350 bird species including parakeets macaws cockatiels and cockatoos according to the Integrated Taxonomic Information system (ITIS).
Though there are many types of parrots all parrot species have a few traits in common. For example to be classified as a parrot the bird must have curved a beak
and its feet must be zygodactyl which means there are four toes on each foot with two toes that point forward and two that point backward.
Because the parrot order includes so many different species parrot sizes vary widely. Parrots can range in size from about 3. 5 to 40 inches (8. 7 to 100 centimeters)
and weigh 2. 25 to 56 ounces (64 g to 1. 6 kg) on average. The world's heaviest type of parrot is the kakapo
which can weigh up to 9 lbs. 4 kg. The smallest parrot is faced the buff pygmy parrot
which is only about 3 inches (8 cm) tall and weighs just 0. 4 ounces (10 g). Most wild parrots live in the warm areas of the Southern hemisphere
though they can be found in many other regions of the world such as northern Mexico.
Australia South america and Central america have the greatest diversity of parrot species. Not all parrots like warm weather though.
Some parrots like to live in snowy climates. A few cold-weather parrots are maroon-fronted parrots thick-billed parrots and keas.
With their colorful plumage and ability to mimic human speech parrots are very popular pets.
Some parrot pets have escaped their owners and bred in unusual areas. For example a popular bird in the pet trade the monk parakeet a native of subtropical South america now resides in the United states after some of them escaped
and reproduced in the wild. Most parrots are social birds that live in groups called flocks.
African grey parrots live in flocks with as many as 20 to 30 birds. Many species are monogamous
and spend their lives with only one mate. The mates work together to raise their young.
Parrots throughout the flock communicate with one another by squawking and moving their tail feathers. Some parrots like the kakapo are nocturnal.
They sleep during the day and search for food at night. Parrots are omnivores which means that they can eat both meat and vegetation.
Most parrots eat a diet that contains nuts flowers fruit buds seeds and insects. Seeds are their favorite food.
They have strong jaws that allow them to snap open nutshells to get to the seed that's inside.
Keas use their longer beaks to dig insects out of the ground for a meal
and kakapos chew on vegetation and drink the juices. Parrots are like most other birds
and lay eggs in a nest. Some species though lay their eggs in tree holesground tunnels rock cavities and termite mounds.
Parrots typically lay two to eight eggs at one time. A parrot's egg needs 18 to 30 days of incubation before it can hatch so the parents take turns sitting on the eggs.
A parrot chick is born with only a thin layer of thin wispy feathers called down.
Parrot chicks are blind for the first two weeks of their lives. At three weeks they start to grow their adult feathers.
The chick will not be matured fully for one to four years depending on its species. According to the Integrated Taxonomic Information system (ITIS) the taxonomy of parrots is:
Many species of parrots are endangered. The kakapo (Strigops habroptila) is endangered a critically parrot according to the Kakapo Recovery Organization.
There are fewer than 150 left. The there are only 50 orange-bellied parrots (Neophema chrysogaster) found in Australia making it one of the most endangered parrots in the world.
The yellow-headed Amazon (Amazona oratrix) is endangered another parrot though there are more of them than kakapos or orange-bellied parrots.
According to International Union for Conservation of Nature there are 7000 yellow-headed Amazons left in the wild.
Parrots are very good mimics and can copy sounds that they hear in their environment;
they can even copy human words and laughter. The African grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus) is the best at this
and one named Alex is said to be the world's smartest parrot. The kakapo is one of the world's longest-living birds;
they can live more than 90 years. Cockatoos have a group of feathers on top of their heads that they can move.
When on full display these feathers resemble a mohawk. The cockatoo can also retract the feathers
so they lay flat against their heads r
#Chasing Alligators, Dodging Parrots: A Zookeeper's Life (Op-Ed) Christopher Scoufaras is a zookeeper at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS)' s Queens Zoo.
He contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Growing up I regularly visited the WCS's Bronx Zoo
and New york Aquarium and knew from a young age that I was interested in working with animals.
I would sit in front of the primate exhibits for hours and watch their behavior it was exciting to see up close
and in person what I'd only seen on television. I studied animal biotechnology and conservation at Delaware Valley College in Pennsylvania but
Our zoo is small enough that keepers get to work with a wide range of animals from bison and mountain lions to tropical birds Andean bears and Roosevelt elk.
I do sometimes get goose bumps from a few of the parrots. There's one in particular who will fly at you
I've also had an opportunity to work with rhea (flightless birds native to South america) that we raised
I heard one of the rheas running towards me. I turned to look and saw a male completely fluffed up
I soon made my way to the door leaving the hissing puffed-up kicking rhea behind.
Only Zookeepers Get to Feed the Penguins (Op-Ed) Just the fact that my career is not a regular office job that every day is different and exciting makes me love what
and recycled nutrients created habitat variability that benefited grassland birds insects and small mammals and provided abundant food resources for grizzly bears wolves and humans.
Archaeologists found residues of fish scales bird feathers and starchy plants at a Neanderthal cave in the Rhone Valley in France.
><p>Archaeologists in Israel have uncovered intricate mosaics on the floor of a 1500-year-old Byzantine church including one that bears a Christogram surrounded by birds.</
#Once Endangered, Bald eagle Populations Soar Bryan Watts is director of the Center for Conservation Biology a joint program of the College of William & Mary and Virginia Commonwealth University.
When Mitchell Byrd took over the annual bald-eagle survey for the state of Virginia disco was king the Dow jones Industrial Average was just over 800
But after all of these years Mitchell's commitment to bald eagles is staying Alive with the beginning of the 2014 flight season in early March Byrd began the 38th year of his involvement in the aerial survey.
In the four decades that he has worked on the aerial survey of Virginia's Chesapeake bay drainage basin Byrd has witnessed the U s. national bird's recovery from around 30 nesting pairs to a population that may be nearing a saturation point.
Eagles were eliminated just about from the bay before the insecticide DDT was banned in 1972 and Byrd began logging the bird's comeback in the region in 1977.
Since that time biologists have learned a lot about eagles. At the Center for Conservation Biology new technology has helped us understand the lives
and movements of individual eagles at a level that was just about unimaginable 38 years ago. We've been able to deploy nest cameras to watch the birds'chick-raising habits and their family life.
Technology has advanced to the point that we can track movements of individual eagles. To do so we fit solar-powered transmitters on the birds'backs.
Since the bald eagle comeback has proven such a success In virginia's stretch of the Chesapeake we've been able to study these birds as a population not just as individuals.
Though individual eagles hold a great deal of interest they are even more fascinating when you consider the raptors as a community.
We've seen more than one instance of bald eagles nesting in the middle of a great blue heron rookery. Why?
We're not really sure. And we don't suggest the bald eagle as a role model for human behavior:
Our studies document instances of deadbeat dads and cheating wives among the populations of the United states'national bird.
We've also witnessed threats to the domestic tranquility of these birds. Raccoons are pretty bad they can eat eagle eggs
and chicks but they're nothing like great horned owls who will swoop into a nest decapitate the chicks
and leave often after whitewashing the nest with their feces. High-tech tools like satellite transmitters and nest videocams have given us a better understanding of eagle life
but the census flights remain a primary tool for keeping tabs on the population. The annual bald eagle assessment involves two rounds of flights.
The first the survey round begins in early March and involves systematically flying over all tributaries to check nests that we've recorded from previous years.
This part of the survey also includes mapping new nests constructed since the last breeding season.
We return in late April flying what we call the productivity round. Now that we know exactly where the eagles are nesting we fly back to each nest counting the number of new chicks.
This two-pronged survey method allows us to monitor the number of breeding pairs and get a handle on their distribution
and breeding success. Three of us have been doing these flights together for 23 years. We make a good team.
An ex-fighter pilot flies the plane. Named Caton Alexander Shermer he goes by Capt. Fuzzzo.
and pulling g's. Spotting eagles has gotten sportier. Those lazy flying days of the'70s when nests were rare
since the bald eagle population has recovered. Eagles mostly eat fish and they never nest far from water.
So we fly low along the shoreline. For long stretches we see a nest every few seconds.
Eagles tend to nest in the same places often reusing a nest so out of the three of us we know
Sometimes for reasons known only to the eagles a tree might go without a nest for a year or two.
After flying over all those nests we've gotten pretty good at quickly gauging the age of eagle chicks by evaluating size and plumage.
These flights involve more than just keeping track of the numbers of breeding eagles in our territory.
We're always discovering something new about bald eagles. For instance a small segment of our territory between the Virginia towns of Jamestown and Smithfield served as home to the earliest breeders on our beat.
In the 1980s a pair of early birds that we called the Christmas Eagles nested on Jamestown Island.
This year we found birds raising chicks that came from eggs laid in November a time
when most eagles around here haven't even begun courtship or nest-repair activities. We don't know why birds here breed so early
or why the early birds seem to concentrate in this one short stretch of the James river.
Frankly there's a lot we don't know about the national bird and that's why it's so important to continue the research especially these annual census flights.
No one complains about the increased workload especially not Byrd. Still fresh are the memories of undertaking long heartbreaking flights without finding a single nest.
For the first two years of the survey researchers found no eagle pairs along the entire James river from deep in the interior of Virginia to the Chesapeake bay.
I'm happy to say that Byrd intends to keep going up every year to count the crop of young bald eagles.
Osprey Watchers as Citizen-Scientists. The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.
#Feed the Birds? Not Popcorn and Crumbled Bread (Op-Ed) Deborah Robbins Millman is the director of Cape Wildlife Center one of New england's largest wildlife rehabilitation centers
For many feeding birds at ponds and parks is cherished a childhood memory; one they lovingly recreate for their children and grandchildren.
Yet tragically thousands of birds die annually due to a condition overwhelmingly caused by people who don't know this beloved activity can be deadly.
Angel wing is a deformity commonly found in ducks geese swans and other waterfowl. There has been little scientific study done on the condition yet most wildlife
and waterfowl experts agree the overwhelming cause of angel wing is an unhealthily high protein and/or carbohydrate-based diets.
or both wings to unnaturally twist outward rather than lie flat against a bird's body.
Birds with angel wing are stripped of their ability to fly and therefore their main method of defense.
Since the affected birds are unable to escape predators they are maimed often or killed by them.
The birds most likely to contract angel wing are those residing in parks on ponds
Because birds grow much more rapidly than humans each day's nutrition has a direct effect on development.
Research such as oft-referenced studies on Canada geese and nutrition for young birds suggest feeding waterfowl an unhealthy diet can accelerate growth causing the wing to develop too quickly for proper bone support.
Nutritious waterfowl feed or duck pellets are inexpensive easy to carry and can be purchased at most feed stores.
and oats are all healthy food sources that will appeal to most waterfowl. Make sure anything you feed is bite-sized to avoid choking hazards.
and operated by The Fund for Animals (an affiliate of The Humane Society of the United states) treats about 2000 animals per year including a significant number of geese swans
and ducks suffering from angel wing. The highest incidence of admission is late fall or winter when affected birds have grown enough for the condition to be fully and painfully apparent.
If the patients treated are very young the condition can sometimes be minimized by splinting and repositioning the affected wing while feeding the birds a proper diet for optimal growth.
Even then a full recovery is guaranteed not. For rehabilitators it can be emotionally taxing to see birds denied the chance for a full and productive life
because people didn't know about the dangers of improperly feeding them. Angel wing can be reduced drastically by not feeding birds people food including white bread popcorn or crackers.
This simple rule will literally save lives. Angel wing chiefly affects waterfowl. Young songbirds are fed by their parents
and after they fledge have a lot of mobility and exposure to a varied diet.)The risk of birds developing this disease doesn't mean the enjoyable
and bonding activity of feeding birds must be eliminated you just have to identify areas where feeding waterfowl is supported.
Typically places that do not support feeding have posted signs or are located on private property and offer the birds the right food to sustain their health.
Feeding wild birds a proper diet preserves a treasured family tradition while teaching children the importance of making choices that strengthen rather than undercut the human-animal bond.
In this way we will rear generations of people recognizing the necessity for responsible stewardship and celebrate the value of compassionate co-existence with wildlife.
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Masses of dead barnacles and starfish proved the land had just been underwater. Plafker concluded the pattern could only have been caused by a hidden fault releasing tension about 9 miles (15 km) below the surface.
Some monkeys also eat meat in the form of bird's eggs small lizards insects and spiders.
#Rains Spurred by Climate Change Killing Penguin Chicks Penguin-chick mortality rates have increased in recent years off the coast of Argentina a trend scientists attribute to climate change
From 1983 through 2010 researchers based at the University of Washington in Seattle monitored a colony of roughly 400000 Magellanic penguins living halfway up the coast of Argentina on a peninsula called Punta Tombo.
Each year the researchers visited penguin nests once or twice a day from Mid-september through late February to assess the overall status of the colony
Gallery of Magellanic Penguin Colony The resulting data set provides one of the longest-ever records of a single penguin colony.
David Ainley a senior wildlife ecologist at ecological consulting firm H. T. Harvey & Associates who studies Antarctic penguin colonies says that aside from giving Magellanic chicks the chills rain can also damage the burrows
I think that penguin pairs that have good burrows probably wouldn't suffer much of an effect
Wayne Trivelpiece an Antarctic penguin researcher with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric administration's Southwest Fisheries science Center based in La jolla Calif. agrees that climate change is a serious threat to these and other penguin populations around the world.
He has spent nearly the past 40 years studying penguins in Antarctica and said he has seen also a decline in populations that he feels comfortable attributing to the indirect effects of climate change.
The Torah provides a list of forbidden birds but does not specify why these particular flying creatures are outlawed.
Permitted birds include chicken geese ducks and turkeys. Even foods that are allowed must be prepared in a particular way to be considered kosher.
Helpful passers-by with chains and four-wheel drives kindly offered to pull me out but really only made matters worse.
Unlike birds and butterflies the drab millimeter-long gloomy scale has invited not enthusiastic long-term monitoring.
and more than 850 in neck snares including mountain lions river otters pronghorn antelope deer badgers beavers turtles turkeys ravens ducks geese great blue herons and even a golden eagle.
Even though I was experienced an professional trapper my trap victims included non-target species such as bald eagles and golden eagles a variety of hawks and other birds rabbits sage grouse pet dogs deer
Yet with the exception of serious birders attracted to its rare and abundant bird life most people have heard never of it.
In the course of a single day and night I saw hyacinth and blue-and-yellow macaws brocket deer white-lipped peccary rhea jabiru stork roseate spoonbill wood stork the greater potoo capybara tapir
#A Centenary for the Last Passenger pigeon (Op-Ed) Steve Zack is coordinator of Bird Conservation for the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS.
Monday is the centenary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon. That timing is precise because we know that the very last bird (Martha after Martha Washington) died in the Cincinnati Zoo on September 1 1914.
It was without doubt the most dramatic extinction ever witnessed. No other bird has darkened so impressively the skies
and stirred wonder and awe in the immensity of its flocks as did the passenger pigeon.
The bird was witnessed by John James Audubon John Muir Thomas Jefferson George washington and countless of their peers in early America.
The number of these birds#was far beyond the power of human calculation wrote Virginia historian Philip Bruce in the 17th century.
With awe he recorded that for hours they darkened the sky like a pall of thunder clouds;
The passenger pigeon was likely the most abundant bird on earth in the 18th century numbering three to five billion individuals.
A ravenous wanderer Ectopistes migratorius. The wanderer that migrates. The passenger pigeon was a bird of eastern North america that moved in search of mast.
Mast is a botanical term for the hard nut fruits produced by trees like beeches and acorns.
The immense flocks of passenger pigeons were most abundant in these forests. They make waste whole forest in a short time and leave a famine behind them for most other creatures noted colonial historian Robert Beverly in 1722...
Images of Rare Passenger pigeon Museum Specimens That seems the essence of the passenger pigeon's ecology (consuming abundant mast)
and its behavior (the massive flights of these birds across the country until such mast was found).
and netted the passenger pigeons in great even astonishing numbers for consumption. As forests were felled
Although massive hunting events are the popular explanation for the passenger pigeon demise I side with Argentine scientist Enrique Bucher's interpretation of how the felling of the forests led to disruption of the copious masting phenomenon and the cascading decline of that once hyper-abundant bird.
The scale of land-clearing was immense and large trees (which produce the most abundant fruits) were preferentially felled.
Valley bottoms dominated by beeches the most important hard nut trees of the pigeons were cleared for farming.
Once abundant mast began to disappear the pigeons also lost the capacity to breed twice in a season across different masting locales.
The market hunting of mere millions of birds paled in comparison to the loss of billions that once darkened the skies in search of mast.
Market hunting was eliminated by U s. Congressional legislation in the early 1900s too late for the passenger pigeon
and acts upon endangered species. When common birds become uncommon However people are less zealous about protecting species when abundant or even common.
when passenger pigeon abundance was in the many millions down from a few billions its fate was sealed.
Old world vultures were once abundant highly social and mobile birds. But poisons intended to kill game
and veterinary medicines given to livestock subsequently consumed by the obligate scavengers have reduced dramatically vulture populations in Asia
Flamingos too are highly social and famously nomadic wanderers. Four of the six flamingo species are endangered because of mining
and other threats to their critically important soda lakes where they feed and breed. African Grey Parrots aggregate in tremendous numbers around fruiting trees and at forest openings rich in salts in Central African forests.
Millions of these birds have now been lost to the pet trade putting the species at risk.
Are vultures flamingos parrots and numerous other abundant highly social and mobile species destined to the same fate as the passenger pigeon?
Can society know the thresholds for the resources that drive such animals'movements and define their ecology?
Martha alone could not darken the skies. But on the important centenary of her death we need to reflect
The clouds that were once dense flocks of passenger pigeons remind us of the darker future for us all
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