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Birding Sepilok, Borneo (Part 2)

10,000 Birds

In the non-breeding season, male Baya Weavers sometimes enter the basket-making trade, often with considerable success. Meanwhile, the females seem to have a much more relaxing life, at least in this early stage of the breeding season. In the unloved “Other” section of today’s post, we have a few more mammals.

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Puerto Rico Plans Huge Primate Breeding Facility to Supply Researchers

Critter News

The proposed primate breeding facility would violate both the letter and the spirit of Puerto Rico’s progressive new law, which strictly limits the use of animals in experimentation.

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Birding the Ndumo area, South Africa

10,000 Birds

Greater Flamingos are considered cooperative breeders as fledglings are raised in a creche, in which large numbers of young are watched by multiple non-breeding adult greater flamingos. On the other hand, their preferred food is blood, and they also feed on it directly, pecking at a mammal’s wounds to keep them open ( source ).

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15 Australian Birds (Episode 2)

10,000 Birds

Quite likely, these birds are also the inspiration for Australian science communicator Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki. According to the HBW entry for this species, it “has been claimed that loss of native mammals after European settlement created shortage of nesting material, explaining this species’ penchant for taking hair from humans.”

Australia 201
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Great Tit Telomeres, Baby Talk, Brainy Birds

10,000 Birds

Third, which we already suspected, bird brains are adjusted to provide extra smartness in a way not seen in mammals. They used Great T**s from non-urban and urban areas, and mixed them up through breeding, to rule out any possible family history of telomere length. City Great Tit ( Parus major ) telomeres shortened.

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15 Australian Birds (Episode 6)

10,000 Birds

According to Tim Low (in “Where Song began”), “so easy were they to breed that by 1859 they cost less to buy in London than in Sydney.” ” Funny how the difficulty of breeding a species can be illustrated in simple monetary terms. Is it offensive to say that Australian Zebra Finches breed like rabbits?

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The Why of Ferrets

10,000 Birds

Though it was well-known to the Native American populations that shared its space, the black-footed ferret was overlooked by Lewis and Clark and all subsequent Euro-American expeditions, remaining officially unknown to science until John James Audubon, his sons, and the Rev. But the ferrets kept dying.

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