Bird

Bird Brains Show How Trial and Error May Contribute to Learning

The adult male zebra finch knows only one scratchy tune learned in its youth, which it performs repeatedly and intensely when females are listening. But occasionally, the finch might improvise, experimenting with a slower, more sultry variation or emphasizing different notes. Neurobiologists studying the finch now say the improvisation arises from a component of a crucial learning circuit...

Scientists Propose Sweeping Changes to Naming of Bird Neurosystems to Acknowledge Their True Brainpower

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval to Mylan Technologies, Inc., for the first generic version of Alza Corporation's Duragesic Patch (Fentanyl Transdermal System) used to treat patients suffering from severe chronic pain that cannot be managed with alternative analgesics. When applied to the skin, this patch technology delivers fentanyl, an opioid pain medication that is s...

Birds brains reveal source of songs

Scientists have yearned to understand how the chirps and warbles of a young bird morph into the recognizable and very distinct melodies of its parents. Neuroscientists at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT now have come one step closer to understanding that process. They've shown for the first time how a particular brain region in birds serves as the source of vocal creativity....

Migratory songbirds have a specialized night-vision brain area

Neurobiologists have discovered a specialized night-vision brain area in night-migratory songbirds. They believe the area might enable the birds to navigate by the stars, and to visually detect the earth's magnetic field through photoreceptor molecules, whose light-sensitivity is modulated by the field. The researchers published their findings May 23, 2005, in the early online edition of t...

The lopsided brain: Attention bias is shared by humans and birds

When it comes to the world laid before us, our mind's eye has a bias. For reasons that are not entirely clear, during some tasks humans have a tendency to devote more visual attention to the left side of the visual world than the right side, a phenomenon known as pseudoneglect. Researchers now report that pseudoneglect is not restricted to humans but is shared by birds, suggesting not only that b...

Bobbing birds do it for a reason

Pronounced head-bobbing behavior during walking is a characteristic of diverse species of birds, but how this behavior benefits the birds and under what circumstances it proves useful have remained uncertain. Researchers this week report findings that strongly suggest that for some birds head bobbing is critical for the stabilization of their visual world, despite the motion of their bodies, and...

Mother birds increase progesterone to hatch females

In mammals, sperm from the male determines the sex of the offspring. In birds, however, it is the female's sex chromosome that determines offspring sex. Now, Cornell University researchers think they understand the mechanism that several bird species use to bias the sex ratios of their offspring toward female. By experimenting with domestic chickens, they have determined that the presence...

Researchers Identify Cause of Early Bird Sleep Disorder

A few rare people who consistently nod off early, then wake up wide-eyed much before dawn, can blame a newly-found mutant gene for their sleep troubles, Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers announced today. This odd "time-shift" trait -- called familial advanced sleep phase syndrome (FASPS) -- was studied in one affected family by neurologist Louis J. Ptacek, a Howard Hughes Medical...

Overbearing colored light may reveal a second mechanism by which birds interpret magnetic signals

Magnetic orientation is critical to the migratory success of many bird species. By studying the influence of light on the ability of migratory birds to orient to magnetic signals, researchers have found clues to suggest that birds' orientation abilities may be more complex than previously thought and that birds may be able to interpret magnetic signals by more than one mechanism. The work is repo...

Industrial contaminants spread by seabirds in High Arctic, new Canadian study shows

Seabirds are the surprising culprits in delivering pollutants ?through their guano ?to seemingly pristine northern ecosystems, a new Canadian study shows. The most common form of wildlife in the Arctic, seabirds are responsible for transporting most of the human-made contaminants to some coastal ecosystems, the researchers found. "The effect is to elevate concentrations of pollutants such...

Bird samples from Mongolia confirmed as H5N1 avian flu

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has positively identified the pathogenic form of avian flu--H5N1--in samples taken from birds last week in Mongolia by field veterinarians from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). It is the first instance of this viral strain occurring in wild migratory birds with no apparent contact to domestic poultry or waterfowl. Present in Mong...

Study: Predatory dinosaurs had bird-like pulmonary system

What could the fierce dinosaur T. rex and a modern songbird such as the sparrow possibly have in common? Their pulmonary systems may have been more similar than scientists previously thought, according to new research from Ohio University and Harvard University. Though some scientists have proposed that predatory dinosaurs had lungs similar to crocodiles and other reptiles, a new study pub...

Birds and bats sow tropical seeds

Restoring the rich diversity of trees that once characterized expansive tracts of tropical rainforest gets a helping hand from native birds and bats. Just how big a role these winged gardeners play is a question ecologists from the University of Illinois at Chicago and several Latin American universities are about to find out by setting up essentially a living laboratory in Mexico's gulf coast st...

UW scientists report a new method to speed bird flu vaccine production

In the event of an influenza pandemic, the world's vaccine manufacturers will be in a race against time to forestall calamity. But now, thanks to a new technique to more efficiently produce the disarmed viruses that are the seed stock for making flu vaccine in large quantities, life-saving inoculations may be available more readily than before. The work is especially important as governments worl...

On a wing and a prayer - Alaska researchers seek clues to bird flu

While Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" made many of us uneasy at the sight of amassing gulls years ago, today public health officials around the world are beginning to cast an equally uneasy eye toward migratory birds, especially in Alaska, following recent outbreaks of avian influenza in Southeast Asia and, last week, in Siberia. Alaska is at the intersection of the Asian and North American...

Displaced songbirds navigate in the high Arctic

By experimentally relocating migratory white-crowned sparrows (Zonotrichia leucophrys gambelii) from their breeding area in the Canadian Northwest Territories to regions at and around the magnetic North Pole, researchers have gained new insight into how birds navigate in the high Arctic. In particular, the findings aid our understanding of how birds might determine longitudinal information--a cha...

Oil spills and climate change double the mortality rate of British seabirds

New research from the University of Sheffield has shown that major oil spills and a changing climate have had a far greater impact on populations of British sea birds than was previously thought. A team led by Professor Tim Birkhead from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, shows for the first time that major oil spills double the mortality rate of a...

Newly discovered birdlike dinosaur is oldest raptor ever found in South America

Relative of Velociraptor rewrites evolutionary charts The recent discovery of a 90-million-year-old dinosaur in Patagonia demonstrates that dromaeosaurs, a group of carnivorous theropods that includes Velociraptor and is closely related to birds, originated much earlier than previously thought. Rather than originating during the Cretaceous, dromaeosaurs can now be traced back to the Juras...

Overfishing may drive endangered seabird to rely upon lower quality food

The effects of overfishing may have driven marbled murrelets, an endangered seabird found along the Pacific coast, to increasingly rely upon less nutritious food sources, according to a new study by biologists at the University of California, Berkeley. The results, to be published online by early March 2006 in the journal Conservation Biology, suggest that feeding further down the food web...

Wild birds help to create human flu vaccine

Samples collected by WCS in international collaboration effort in Mongolia to be used in development of human pandemic influenza vaccineAvian influenza virus samples collected from wild birds in Mongolia by field veterinarians from the New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) have been selected by the World Health Organization to be part of a new human pandemic influenza vaccine cu...

Expert dispels bird flu paranoia

The risk of human bird flu infection is small in Australia and people can still safely eat chicken and keep pet birds, according to bird medicine specialist Dr Bob Doneley. "You're more likely to have a light pl...

Bird song changes sound alarm over habitat fragmentation

Changes in bird song could be used as an early warning system to detect man-made ecological disturbances, new research published in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology has found. Although much previous research has focused on bird song and vocal mimicry, this is the first study to analyse the role played by habitat loss and fragmentation on song-matching. Ecologists...

Duke to test bird flu vaccine dosing

A clinical trial to test different strengths of a vaccine designed to fight avian influenza will begin this month at Duke University Medical Center. The seven-month trial is spon...

Sweetgum tree could help lessen shortage of bird flu drug

The sweetgum tree grows widely throughout the country and is known for its mace-like green fruit, which are sometimes called "gumballs." Now, this spiny fruit may become an important source of a chemical needed to make a lifesaving drug against bird flu ?a drug that is currently in short supply worldwide, researchers say. Chemists have found that the seeds of the sweetgum fruit contain sig...

Horse antibodies against the bird flu virus H5N1 are effective as treatment in mice

Antibodies against the bird flu virus H5N1, derived from horses, prevent mice infected with H5N1 from dying from the virus. ) reveals that a dose of 100 µg of horse anti-serum effectively protects infected mice. These results suggest that an...

Birds that make teeth

Gone does not necessarily mean forgotten, especially in biology. A recent finding by researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and colleagues from the University of Manchester have found new evidence that the ability to form previously lost organs--in this case, teeth--can be maintained millions of years after the last known ancestor possessed them. Birds do not have teeth. How...

'Uniquely human' component of language found in gregarious birds

Although linguists have argued that certain patterns of language organization are the exclusive province of humans -- perhaps the only uniquely human component of language -- researchers from the University of Chicago and the University of California San Diego have discovered the same capacity to recognize such patterns and distinguish between them in Sturnus vulgaris, the common European starlin...

Horseshoe crab decline threatens shorebird species

Each year, the red knot, a medium-sized shorebird, makes a 20,000-mile round-trip from the southern tip of Argentina to the Artic Circle ?one of the longest migrations of any bird. And each year from April to June, the red knot stops over in the Delaware Bay to feed on horseshoe crab eggs resulting from the largest spawning of horseshoe crabs found on the East Coast of the United States....

Cell barrier shows why bird flu not so easily spread among humans

Although more than 100 people have been infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus, mostly from close contact with infected poultry, the fact that the virus does not spread easily from its pioneering human hosts to other humans has been a biomedical puzzle. Now, a study of cells in the human respiratory tract reveals a simple anatomical difference in the cells of the system that makes it...

Attractive birds more immune against bird flu

A research team at Uppsala University, Sweden has shown in a new study, published in the journal Acta Zoologica, that the size of the spot on a male collared flycatcher's forehead reflects how well the immune defence system combats viruses such as avian influenza. The white spot is also attractive to female birds searching for a mate. Evolutionary biologists have long attempted to explain...

Not just the birds

In an extensive study, researchers from the University of Montana, University of California - Santa Cruz, and the University of California - Davis have shown that a top predator strongly affected plants and animals at the bottom of an island food web by eating organisms that transport nutrients between ecosystems. "An introduced predator alters Aleutian island plant communities by thwarting nutr...

Poison dart frog mimics gain when birds learn to stay away

Studying neotropical poison dart frogs, biologists at the University of Texas at Austin uncovered a new way that the frog species can evolve to look similar, and it hinges on the way predators learn to avoid the toxic, brightly colored amphibians. In the Mar. 8 issue of Nature, Catherine Darst and Molly Cummings show that a harmless, colorful frog living in the Amazonian rainforest gets p...

Restoring seagrass beds: Is it for the birds?

Although most people consider bird droppings a nuisance, scientists at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab see them as a rich source of phosphorus, a natural fertilizer for grassbeds which have been destroyed by boat propellers. Over the next couple of months, Sea Lab scientists Dr. Ken Heck and Dr. John Dindo will be setting out bird stakes in an effort to revive scarred grassbeds around the popular rec...

Crucial site for endangered frogs and birds saved

Fast action by an alliance of conservation groups battling global extinctions has saved one of the world's most important sites for endangered species. American Bird Conservancy (ABC), Conservation International (CI), and Fundación ProAves of Colombia stepped in to protect the 1,600-acre site on the northwest slope of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta massif, on the Caribbean coast of Colom...

Northern birds are fatter!

"The further birds migrate north for the summer, the faster they put on weight", says Dr Williams (Simon Fraser University, Canada) who has been tracking migrating birds for several years. "This research may have implications for the designation of protected areas which will ensure birds can complete their spring and autumn migrations." Dr Williams will present his research on Tuesday 4th April a...

Bird flu study highlights need to vaccinate flocks effectively

Incomplete vaccination of poultry flocks could make the spread of deadly strains of avian flu such as H5N1 worse, scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Warwick have found. The research shows that even though the available vaccines are effective on individual birds, the disease is likely to spread unless almost all of a flock has been protected. The study, published in Nature journal, is...

Can biological traits predict diversification rates in birds?

Why do some taxanomic families contain many species and others contain far fewer? There has been much debate in the scientific community over the reason for such variation, but a recent study in The American Naturalist by Albert B. Phillimore (Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus), Robert P. Freckleton (Oxford University), C. David L. Orme (Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus),...

Light guides flight of migratory birds

Songbirds use multiple sources of directional cues to guide their seasonal migrations, including the Sun, star patterns, the earth's magnetic field, and sky polarized light patterns. To avoid navigational errors as cue availability changes with time of day and weather conditions, these "compass" systems must be calibrated to a common reference. Experiments over the last 30 years have failed to re...

Bird brains shrink from exposure to contaminants

The regions in robins' brains responsible for singing and mating are shrinking when exposed to high levels of DDT, says new University of Alberta research--the first proof that natural exposure to a contaminant damages the brain of a wild animal. "These residues have been persisting since the late 1960s--that's what is really disturbing," said Dr. Andrew Iwaniuk, a post-doctoral research...

New bird flu drug promises to beat the problem of resistance

A new kind of drug to fight bird flu that will not suffer from the same kind of resistance problems as current treatments should begin clinical trials within the next three years, thanks to a new research grant. Dr Andrew Watts from the University of Bath (UK) and Dr Jennifer McKimm-Breschkin from CSIRO (Australia) have been awarded over £408,000 from the Medical Research Council (MRC) to...