PREDATOR REPELLENT PRECISELY : NATURE'S GREAT ESSAY

 

USING snakeskin to decorate nests isn't just for style reasons. 

IN 1989 - the Naturalist Allan Octavian Hume wrote that he was puzzled by macabre decorations he observed in many birds' nests : strips of dried snakeskin.

Hume and several of his contemporaries had a hypothesis. The snakeskin scared away predators.

A new study suggests they were onto something : After analyzing century old records of birds' nests and observing more than 140 nests,  researchers reported in The American Naturalist that in some types of nests, the presence of snakeskin greatly reduced the risk that predators would take the eggs.

All reptiles shed patches of dead skin as they grow, but snakes shed skin off their entire bodies in one big piece.

However, finding a snakeskin in the wild can be tricky, sand Vanya Rohwer, a curator at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates, in New York, and an author of the study.

This scarcity of snakeskin makes it all the more remarkable that so many birds use it in their nests. 

'' How in the world are they finding it? And why do they invest all that time to bring it back to their nests?'' Dr. Rohwer said.

Dr. Rohwer delved into digitized historical records of nesting behaviors.

His team determined that cavity nesters - birds that build their nests in holes on structures like trees and cliffs - are six and a half times as likely to incorporate snakeskin into their nests as are species that create more '' classic '' cup-shaped nests.

Dr. Rohwer surveyed the microbes and larger parasites in nests with and without snakeskin to see if the skin warded off fleas and mites or reduced the nest's harmful microbes.

There didn't seem to be any correlations.

This Master Essay continues to Part [2].

The World Students Society thanks Kate Golembiewski.