Study Reveals Coots Can Count

A new study in the journal Nature reveals that some birds can count. Researchers have found that they’re able to identify and tally their eggs in order to improve their reproductive success. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett explains:

Transcript

A new study in the journal Nature reveals that some birds can count. Researchers have found that
they’re able to identify and tally their eggs in order to improve their reproductive success. The
Great Lakes Consortium’s Sarah Hulett explains:


Bruce Lyon is a biologist at the University of California Santa Cruz. He made the discovery while
doing research on the reproductive behavior of American Coots. Coots are dark gray, duck-like
waterbirds that live in the northern U-S and southern Canada. They’re parasitic birds. That means
they lay some of their eggs in other coots’ nests – tricking the host birds into incubating eggs that
aren’t theirs.


But Lyon found that some females are able to recognize the foreign eggs by counting and ignoring
the imposters. Lyon says taking care of other birds’ eggs means a slimmer chance of their own
chicks surviving.


“There’s not enough food to go around, and if you end up raising somebody else’s chick, it
probably means you’ve lost one of your own.”


Lyon says a female coot will protect her babies by identifying eggs that aren’t her own, and burying
them or pushing them to the edge of the nest.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.