Interesting camping burial birds

A few years ago, a two-legged animal often came to its nest to get eggs, just like their own home. There has been another one these days, but this one is different from others. It just looked into its nest and didn't know what was going on. In early years, when these two-legged animals first came, he wanted to get close to them, because they were both two-legged, but they killed his companions. He only heard that these guys called themselves "camp burial birds" and buried what seemed to be a "tomb", so he thought it might be that these guys saw high piles of leaves standing on the flat ground and thought it was an ancient tomb.

Huahua looks like a domestic chicken and its color is not bright, so they haven't found him yet, but he is always worried that his incubator will be destroyed by them. Speaking of his incubator, Huahua is very proud. There are 10 species of the same species, which are distributed in the Philippines, Samoa and some nearby islands except Australia. Some of them lay eggs near volcanoes, which are hatched by the heat of volcanic ash, and some lay eggs on the floodplain, which are covered with sand and hatched by the heat of sunlight. However, my flower has the largest and best incubator in the world-stacking leaves and incubating eggs with the heat generated by natural fermentation.

Buried bird incubator

Every April, Huahua begins to build a large-scale project, digging a hole in a sunny place with big claws, and then collecting dried leaves and hay from all directions and putting them in the into the pit until they are piled up to several meters high. After the winter rain moistens these leaves, he will cover them with a layer of garbage and soil.

When spring comes, females come to lay eggs. At this time, under the action of rain and sunshine, the leaves have rotted and fermented, and the female bird dug a small pit between the rotting leaves and laid her eggs in it. Because there is a movable airbag in the bird's egg, the tip of the egg always stands down in the pile of rotten leaves. After about 35 eggs are laid, the flowers spread sediments on them and use the heat generated by the decay of leaves to hatch the eggs. In order to let the baby be born safely, the male flower flower began a hard incubation work. They must control the temperature of the leaf pile at 33-34℃. If the temperature is too high, pull up some sediment to dissipate the heat inside, and if the temperature is too low, pile up more sediment to warm the leaves. Sometimes, he opens the sediment during the day and covers it at night. Really busy. But now, Huahua always feels that her offspring are not increasing and her companions are decreasing. It was not until he saw a fox with a companion in his mouth that he knew that those two-legged animals brought foxes from other places for the pleasure of hunting, and as a result, their companions filled the foxes' stomachs one by one. There were no such carnivores in Australia before, and their companions didn't know how to avoid foxes at all. When they saw the fox, they stood still like birds of prey in the sky. As a result, they became the easiest food for the fox. Alas! Huahua sighed: I have to change my old habits!

Strange two-legged animal

Knock, knock, knock, the two-legged animal left, but Huahua still walked to the nest, pushed aside the pile of leaves and put her long neck into it to explore. Luckily, that strange guy didn't take the eggs. I remember a few times ago, this strange guy put something called an electric heater in my nest. As a result, the temperature of the incubator is overheated for a while and cooled for a while. As a result, these flowers have been blooming and covered with leaves. I was in a hurry and confused. Fortunately, I can keep the temperature normal without affecting the hatching of eggs.

In a few days, the babies will be born, and Huahua should rest. Hua Hua Xin thought: This two-legged animal is different from others. Although it likes to play some practical jokes, it seems that its conscience is not bad. I believe it won't hurt my offspring! In fact, the strange guy in Huahua's eyes is a scientist who is trying to protect the endangered buried birds. Besides foxes, there are more cunning dangers. Buried birds live in good soil for growing wheat, and many habitats are occupied as farms every year. In addition, cattle, sheep and other livestock eat a lot of seeds, flowers and plants in the diet of buried birds, and now the number of buried birds is less than 2000. If humans don't take measures, buried birds will be extinct in 10 years.

Foxes were brought to Australia by immigrants from Europe for hunting in 1855. As a result, foxes have become pests, and their existence has led to the extinction of some local creatures such as rabbits, kangaroos and marsupials. The little buried bird is defenseless against the fox. When danger comes, they habitually stand still, but this makes them the easiest prey for exotic animals. For burying birds, foxes are a disaster. Studies show that in the first 30 days, foxes will swallow almost all the small buried birds.

The challenge for Australian buried birds is that they have been living alone in a warm nest made of rotten leaves since they left the eggshell. Now, with the help of a remote-controlled robot bird made of toy cars and dead bird fur, a research team has revealed for the first time how buried birds recognize their own kind.

When their nervous system was still in the sensitive stage, most birds learned the ability to distinguish themselves from their parents through "prenatal education", but buried birds (a kind of buried pheasant) did not have this choice. The female burial bird lays her eggs in the compost heap built by the male burial bird, and then leaves these eggs, and the heat generated by fertilizer decomposition completes the incubation work. This means that these chicks can't accept "prenatal education" at all. Markhuber, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, pointed out that "this is the most remarkable non-bird lifestyle you can find among animals with feathers and hard-shell eggs". In order to find out how the small buried bird hatched by Chu Gang is different from other buried birds, animal behaviorists AnnGth and ChristopherEvans of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia provided a group of optional mechanical buried birds for the small buried birds. The researchers found that pecking at mechanical burials is more attractive to small burials than other static mechanical burials or wandering mechanical burials. The researchers reported in the Journal of Experimental Biology published on June 1 that after filtering out the ultraviolet rays in the sun, the small buried birds also lost interest in pecking birds, which means that eating behavior and color help buried birds identify their own kind. Burial birds may always grow alone, but some special light and proper exercise can bring them together.