{"id":479,"date":"2003-04-15T02:17:50","date_gmt":"2003-04-15T02:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=479"},"modified":"2011-05-01T18:35:03","modified_gmt":"2011-05-01T23:35:03","slug":"bright-beaked-birds-get-all-the-chicks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/?p=479","title":{"rendered":"bright-beaked birds get all the chicks"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the animal kingdom, females usually prefer to mate with the most elaborately ornamented males — the peacock with the showiest tail or the songbird with the most complex song. It’s long been speculated that these showy sexual displays give honest information about the male’s vitality – only the healthiest males could afford such extravagances – and now a pair of studies in the April 4 Science<\/em> give direct evidence that this is indeed the case. Reseachers from the University of Glasgow focused on beak color in male zebra finches, while a team from the University of Bourgogne in France studied beak color in male blackbirds. Birds with very bright orange beaks were found to have very high levels of carotenoids, a nutrient that boosts the immune system (and that makes carrots — and bird beaks — orange). Birds with stressed immune systems had dull-colored beaks because disease drained the color-giving carotenoids. Males with the brightest-colored beaks – the ones with the most robust immune systems — were the most sexually attractive to the females, and the drab-beaked males were ignored. “This result shows that sexual advertisement honestly signals health,” write the authors of the French study. Left unexplained is why all vertebrates — birds included — find Carrot Top so unappealing. <\/span><\/p>\n

This news brief appeared in the Random Data column of the <\/em>Boston Globe’s Health\/Science section on 4\/15\/2003.<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the animal kingdom, females usually prefer to mate with the most elaborately ornamented males — the peacock with the showiest tail or the songbird with the most complex song. It’s long been speculated that these showy sexual displays give … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-globe-3","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1210,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479\/revisions\/1210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agnieszkabiskup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}