Owls use tools: dung is lure for beetles.Burrowing owls' habit of bringing mammal dung DUNG. Manure. Sometimes it is real estate, and at other times personal property. When collected in a heap, it is personal estate; when spread out on the land, it becomes incorporated in it, and it is then real estate. Vide Manure. to their burrows Burrows is a provincial electoral division in the Canadian province of Manitoba. It was created by redistribution in 1957, and formally came into existence in the provincial election of 1958. The riding is located in the northern part of Winnipeg. is an example of tool use, researchers say. The dung attracts beetles, an important part of owl diets, the scientists have found. Owl watchers have long known that Athene cunicularia collects dung from mammals such as cows. They've also observed that if this dung disappears from the birds' burrows during the early part of the breeding season Breeding season is the most suitable season usually with favorable conditions and abundant food and water when wild animals and birds (wildlife) have naturally evolved to breed to achieve the best reproductive success. , the birds replace it. Douglas Levey of the University of Florida University of Florida is the third-largest university in the United States, with 50,912 students (as of Fall 2006) and has the eighth-largest budget (nearly $1.9 billion per year). UF is home to 16 colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. in Gainesville and his colleagues tested possible benefits of the dung, such as disguising the scent of eggs, in Florida owl populations. However, when the researchers made fake burrows, those furnished with dung succumbed to predators as rapidly as those without it. Tests to determine if the dung was serving as bait were more telling. The dung, even in its dry state, attracted dung beetles dung beetle: see scarab beetle. dung beetle Any member of one subfamily (Scarabaeinae) of scarab beetles, which shapes manure into a ball (sometimes as large as an apple) with its scooperlike head and paddle-shaped antennae. They vary from 0. . And when the researchers drenched drench tr.v. drenched, drench·ing, drench·es 1. To wet through and through; soak. 2. To administer a large oral dose of liquid medicine to (an animal). 3. the dung to simulate rainy conditions, its allure increased. In 4-day tests with owls at 10 burrows, researchers found that taking the dung away from the burrows' entrances left the owls with few beetles in their diet. Owls with a refurbished cow-dung decor, however, averaged ten times as many beetle meals during the test. The results appear in the Sept. 2 Nature Scientists have proposed tool use by various animals, including birds (SN: 11/10/01, p. 295; 3/22/03, p. 182) and even insects. This study demonstrates something that has been hard to test in the wild: whether an animal manipulating a potential tool gets a clear advantage over an animal not using it. Levey points out that dung collection may now offer the benefit of luring food, but there may have been another benefit behind its original evolution. |
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