Chicks on the American coot), are brightly colored, in order to ensure that their parents allow them to starve. The writing of two American wildlife biologists in the scientific journal PNAS.
Coots are often part of a black and white, separate, but a lot of their guys are a lot better in color. The colors have to have one goal in mind: coots have to eat in their brightly-colored offspring.
as a Result, the colored chicks have a significantly higher chance of survival than their colored brothers and sisters. For scientists, however, are a bit of a puzzle where the color is coming from.
In the first instance, had scientists, that is, the more coloured chickens ‘parasitic’ to be. This means that a bird lays its eggs in the nests of other birds.
According to this theory, it would be for the parasitic chicks are more brightly colored, are more likely to survive to have all of the chicks in their own nest. However, it turned out to be the opposite is the case: with the parasitic chicks, and are less colored.
Biologists found a connection between color and when the egg is laid, the
and After the observation of the eggs, the biologists, that there is a correlation between when the egg is laid, and of how colored chicks are out.
Meerkoetmoeders lay about ten eggs at a time, each and every day. The chicks hatched from later-laid eggs were more brightly colored than their older brothers and sisters. Normally, to get the previously released the chicks to eat, but the bright colours mean that this is not the case at all.
The relationship between the sequence of laying and the colour of the chicks will let you see why the ‘parasitic’ chicks will be less and less colored. The parasitic eggs are, according to the biologists, often, the earlier the eggs that the mother lays.
as A coot and her brood. (Photo by Bruce Lyon).
Meerkoetmoeders to lay many more eggs than the food supply can handle it < / p> Meerkoetmoeders to lay significantly more eggs than the available food supply allows them to take care of. The eggs are relatively small, and therefore very little of the resources of the mother. The death rate among chicks is very high, so that the half of the leg, dies of the hunger.
The mothers lay the eggs, and the quantity of the survivors, and then to match the available food. On the way to feed meerkoetmoeders have many chicks as is possible at the moment.
In the first ten days, there were no stains are visible, but with the days of the parents ‘ preferences for particular chicks. The latter was born, and the colored chicks to get more food, and the parents have to prevent the older brothers and sisters can be a lot of food. The parents will prepare them for the older chicks then the neck and shake it back and forth.
finally, The colored chicks are at first much smaller and because they have a later birth, but because of the extra food, they are fast, and the earlier-born coot catching up to do.
