If you’ve ever been to an all-you-can-eat buffet, you know how important it is to carefully weigh your options. You don’t want to fill up on salad when so many calorie-laden delights await. It seems some birds also weigh their mealtime choices—literally. A study finds that Mexican Jays pick up and shake peanuts to assess their relative heft before choosing one. That report is served up in the Journal of Ornithology. [Piotr G. Jablonski et al, Proximate mechanisms of detecting nut properties in a wild population of Mexican Jays (Aphelocoma ultramarina)]
Foods that hide their edible bits on the inside present a challenge to hungry diners. How can you tell which fruits are ripe or which shells harbor the biggest nuts? We humans knock on melons or squeeze avocados. But how do other species select the highest quality snacks?
To find out how the jays do it, researchers fiddled with their feed. First they doctored peanuts so that some contained three nuts while others had none. When they offered these pods to some jays, the birds turned their beaks up at the empty shells and instead chose those that were full. And when the jays were allowed to choose between normal peanuts and those that weighed just one gram more, because the researchers had stuffed them with clay, the birds again went for the heavier meal.
Videos revealed that the jays shake the nuts before selecting one, which apparently lets them gauge the nut’s mass and perhaps also listen for the rattle of a well-packed shell. Pretty clever for a bird brain.
—Karen Hopkin
如需了解更多留学考试的相关信息,那么欢迎拨打【一诺留学】的免费咨询热线400-003-6508或010-62680991进行咨询,或者点击页面的【在线咨询】与顾问老师直接对话。
更多热点资讯欢迎关注:
新浪官方微博:@北京诚品一诺教育咨询
http://weibo.com/yinuoedu
微信订阅号:留学圈 (微信帐号:yinuoliuxue )
姓名:胥鹏
加入一诺留学前就职于太傻咨询北京总部,从业多年以来,服务过数百位客户,作为主管监管过几千名学生的申请材料。善于发现学生的本质问题,引导学生深入思考,从本质上深入发掘学生的亮点,从而有针对性地制定申请计划。在太傻供职期间,连续4年担任太傻留学高峰论坛主讲人,在国内各著名高校巡回演讲,深入浅出的讲座风格受到众多高校同学们的喜爱。
从业以来,帮助多名学生成功申请到自己理想院校,其中包括宾夕法尼亚大学、南加州大学、约翰霍普金斯大学,罗彻斯特大学,华威大学、伦敦政治经济学院、香港中文大学等顶尖名校,并多次指导学生成功获得奖学金。
版权所有@2012-2016 一诺留学网 京ICP备12034294号-1
联系电话:400-003-6508 010-62680991 传真:010-82483329 邮箱:service.bj@yinuoedu.net