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City birds use cigarette butts to smoke out parasites
- olaf 14y agoOur underestimated neighbours :-)
- draq 14y agoThe true victims of high taxes on cigarettes.
- stephenhuey 14y agoLest tobacco manufacturers try to trumpet how compounds in cigarettes help protect urban bird nests from parasites, Suárez-Rodríguez warned at the very end of the article that carcinogens and pesticides in the butts may have negative effects on the birds which we don't yet know about.
- rosser 14y agoApologies: downvoted, when I meant to upvote. Can someone please remedy that?
- sliverstorm 14y agoOk, I downvoted you, karma balance restored, or "remedied" as you call it. ;)
- tertet 14y agoI up-voted you just now but it seems that conservation of karma means I will soon be down-voted.
- sliverstorm 14y agoTough crowd today.
- mtgx 14y agoGreat, now birds will get cancer, too.
- dmritard96 14y agoI am sure they do already, they breath, eat and drink from the same planet as us.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoI imagine that most birds, especially those in the city, don't live long enough for cancer to be a significant cause of death.
- positr0n 14y agoI imagine if your diet consists of things like "french fries sitting in a puddle of antifreeze and oil leakage from the side of the road" you could get cancer quite quickly :-)
- sk5t 14y agoNot too surprising, as both smoke, and many different herbs, are natural pest repellents. Bay leaves, lavender, thyme, etc., might do a good job here too, but of course cannot compete with the availability of pre-shredded tobacco bits in the city.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- CountHackulus 14y agoNew excuse for not quitting smoking, it's good for the environment.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- jbrooksuk 14y agoAnimal Farm anybody?
- ztravis 14y agoI'm amazed at what is being claimed in the headline/description in this article versus what the paper actually has demonstrated (from the brief description in the article/reading the abstract online) - I actually wondered whether the original poster was intending to highlight this disparity. First, the conclusion of the researchers is that having more cigarette butts in a nest correlates with having fewer parasitic mites, but this article states that chemicals in cigarette butts are already known to repel mites. Wouldn't one expect a correlation here? Of course, it's by no means a given, and experiment is required to bear out this conclusion, but it seems like nobody should come away surprised. Second, a correlation here is completely independent from the conclusion that "city birds use cigarette butts" as anything beyond building material! It leaves open this possibility but as far as I can tell the question of intent is entirely unaddressed by the current research. I already know not to expect more from pop-sci research highlights, but I would have though Nature would do better.
- bcoates 14y agoIt's kind of surprising that a used cigarette butt (as opposed to, say, unburned tobacco) holds enough nicotine to act as an effective anti-parasite material for a nest. It's at least a non-obvious result. The article linked to another nature article about birds selectively choosing herbs that repel parasites to line nests, and using scent to know when to refresh them. Given that cigarette butts are effective and that birds are known to pick nest material carefully, the conclusion that birds are introducing them intentionally isn't unreasonable.
- ayuvar 14y agoThis reminds me of the bird habit of "anting" which consists of a bird applying ants (often with the intent of taking advantage of their formic acid) to their plumage to help eliminate parasites. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anting_(bird_activity) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anting_(bird_activity)
- nakedrobot2 14y agofast forward a thousand years.... sentient rats using human remains to build new commnunication networks....