Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of "Ask A Zookeeper" Twitter Questions!
This is where we turn to Twitter (of all places) and find out what people want to know about
birds.
These are pre-chosen questions by the way.
Amer Yaghi starts off, saying "Why do birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere
in the world?
SImilarly, why do humans stay in the same place?"
The first question is a lot easier to answer.
Some birds require specific habitat or a specific type of food that they have adapted to eat
or live in.
Other birds actually are generalists and they HAVE spread around the world.
That's why sparrows are all over North America.
They're not native to here, but they have spread over from Europe.
And that's why Cattle Egrets and crows and parrots are found on almost every continent
in the world.
Vultures are another species- um, type of bird that you find all over the place.
That's because they can adapt to all kinds of different habitats and all kinds of foods!
But some birds, some birds need a specific thing that they need to to stay in one place
for.
The second question, much more difficult to say.
"Why do humans stay in the same place?"
That's a very good philosophical question, and I would say is beyond the scope of this
channel.
But that is a good question to ask yourself.
Thanks Amer Yaghi for asking that good question!
Clay on Twitter asks, "Sure I could Google 'How do birds sleep?' but frankly the answer
would make me too angry at this hour."
That's at 1:51 AM.
So he's up at 1 in the morning, thinking about how do birds sleep, maybe wondering why he
himself can't sleep, but we can at least partially answer that question.
To sleep, every bird that we have checked, they can close one eye and sleep the opposite
half of their brain.
So that is part of the answer of "How do birds sleep?"
They can stay awake while they are sleeping!
At the same time birds can also close both eyes and get more efficient sleep.
It takes less time.
As they are standing on a branch they can grab on with their feet.
Their feet have tendons that lock closed so they don't fall off of a branch while they
are sleeping.
I hope that answer didn't make you angry Clay, but there you go, that's how birds can sleep.
I actually made a video about this if you want to learn more, and I'll link that in
the info cards and in the description below.
Bang Chan asks, "Why do birds have wings?"
We don't know the exact answer because humans weren't around at the time that birds got
wings, so it may not be accurate, but our current theory is that wings developed as
arms originally.
They had feathers attached to them.
And there were two different behaviors that a bird would do, or a bird ancestor would
do at that time.
They could run and then jump to perhaps chase prey or get away from a predator.
Or there's a thing called Wing-assisted Incline Running, which is where a bird needs to get
up to the top of a rock and they'll flap their arms as they run up a steep slope in order
to give themselves extra lift.
Both of those behaviors are assisted by having just feathers on your wings or arms.
One of those probably led to birds developing the ability to fly, which is basically just
the ability to jump and then never come back down.
That's our best guess.
We don't know for sure.
But good question!
Finally, Sir Saisa Fierce asks, "Why do birds' heads protrude and retract when they walk?"
This is a 12:21 AM question, so lots of people up late at night asking questions about birds!
As birds are walking, our best guess is that by keeping their head in one place it keeps
their eyes from moving, and that lets their visual field stay steady so they can keep
an eye out for predators as they're moving from one place to another.
That very distinctive walk - they have a lot of fused bones in their body and they move
their whole body forward while their head is staying in place, then they scoot their
heads forward very quickly and use that to keep their eyes from moving.
I'll put up a video here so you can see what it looks like as a bird walks.
You'll notice that its eyes stay in the same place as it's walking.
Good question!
I hope that answer helps!
If you want to know about birds and ask a zookeeper a question, you can ask me on Twitter
or Instagram or in the comments below.
I'm @BioBush on all three, so feel free to drop me a line.
I'd be happy to help you with your questions.
Thanks for stopping by this week to learn what makes Life awesome!