Page 18 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #06

WILD NEWS

It took a while to
strike the right WILDLIFE
balance between big
birds and brittle eggs. UPDATES
HANDY THINGS
TO HAVE
Sea turtles aren’t
known for
their manual
dexterity.
But research
published
in PeerJ,
reveals that
loggerhead,
hawksbill and
green turtles use
their flippers to hold,
manipulate and dislodge
prey – behaviours usually
found in more intelligent,
Q BIRDS
sociable creatures.
SITTING ON EGGSHELLS NO SWEET HOME

Even bees that never leave
The earliest birds were too did, too. But estimates of the the study. “Oviraptors sat in a the hive are poisoned
heavy to sit on their eggs egg size of 21 early bird species, ring of eggs that were multi- by pesticides and
without breaking them, including Archaeopteryx – made layered and angled inwards. herbicides. The Journal
x
according to a new study, by measuring the diameter of This minimises the contact of Experimental Biology
raising doubts about the idea the pelvic canal through which between egg and the body, reports that exposure to
that dinosaurs incubated their eggs had to pass – suggest which would lead to poor heat chemicals brought in by
their clutches. that the eggs were too fragile to transfer even with eggs at the foragers impairs hive-
Birds emerged from a bear the parents’ weight. top.” He thinks it more likely bound workers’ sense of
lineage of dinosaurs called So is there still life in that, like crocodiles, they simply taste and ability to learn.
therapods. Fossilised dinosaur the idea of egg-brooding guarded their eggs rather than
nests containing adult bones therapod dinosaurs? “From incubated them. FRYING SOUTH
suggest that therapods such as my perspective, no there isn’t,” New research highlights
Oviraptors incubated their eggs says Charles Deeming of the SOURCE Journal of Evolutionary Biology why nestboxes should not
and, therefore, that early birds University of Lincoln, who led LINK https://bit.ly/2JupEb8 face south. The Journal of
Avian Biology reports that,
although blue tit chicks
Q MAMMALS can survive nestbox
te
MUMMY’S BEARS

Ofspring that won’t let go of the parental apron “A single female in Sweden is four times more
strings can be a costly drain on resources. But likely to be shot than one with a cub,” says Jon
new research shows that in some circumstances, Swenson of the Norwegian University of Life
they can be life-savers. Sciences. “This basically means that we are
Scandinavian brown bear cubs typically stick shooting more of those females that only keep
turtle: Rich Carey/Shutterstock; humm ngbird: Photo Researchers/FLPA Brown pe can:T u De Roy/M nden P ctures/FLPA; bears:Jun ors B darch v GmbH/A amy; year. Biologists are linking the change to keep cubs longer Biology reveals that they
their cubs for a year.”
with their mothers for 18 months. But recent
decades have seen an increasing number
Ursine shields:
of females providing care for an additional
mother bears
regulations that prohibit hunting bears
for protection.
with cubs in tow.
Most species respond to being hunted
by speeding up their life-cycle in order to
urrent

produce as many ofspring as possible befo ore
y
focus the sound on the
their lives are cut short. But when your ofspring
object of their afections
are providing protection against the guns, it t’s
they dive.
SOURCE Nature Communications LINK https://go.nature.com/2KhFXtk
June 2018
18 worth taking your time. by twisting their tails as
BBC Wildlife