Cockatoos know how to season and love to cook dark dishes | Natural Trumpet

1) Cockatoos are good at seasoning and love to cook dark dishes

2) Humpback whale swallows athlete

3) The fly larva has a termite’s face on its butt

4) Male stick insects can mate but cannot reproduce

5) How do rabbits supplement calcium? By swallowing their own teeth

6) The best way to get your dog to focus

Parrot's Dark Cuisine

Cockatoos love a dark dish - dipping noodles in blueberry yogurt .

In a new study, scientists observed two Goffin's cockatoos and found that they actually dipped cooked potatoes in blueberry-flavored soy yogurt. Can cockatoos season their food? To this end, they recorded the breakfast habits of 18 cockatoos. The main food options provided to the cockatoos were potatoes and noodles, and the "dipping" options were water, blueberry-flavored soy yogurt, and plain soy yogurt.

Goffin's Cockatoo (Cacatua goffiniana) soaking potato cubes in blueberry yogurt. Soy yogurt is a yogurt-like food made from soy milk | References [1]

The results showed that the cockatoos chose noodles much more often than potatoes, and half of the cockatoos liked to soak their food before eating it. Moreover, they soaked their food in blueberry yogurt much more often than in plain yogurt, but never soaked their food in water .

Cockatoo dipping spaghetti into blueberry-flavored soy yogurt | References [1]

Did the cockatoo soak the noodles in yogurt for seasoning, or simply to soften or clean them?

Previous studies have found that they soak food in water for up to 22.9 seconds, probably to soften dry food; but in this study, they soaked food in yogurt for an average of only 3.2 seconds , indicating that it is more likely just for dipping . Moreover, cockatoos are very picky about taste. They are not keen on noodles or yogurt alone, but they are very fond of noodles dipped in blueberry yogurt.

This study is the first to show that animals other than primates, including humans, also season their food.

Swallowing Athletes

A humpback whale swallowed a kayaker - but it was really accidental!

Recently, a father and son were kayaking off the coast of Chile when a humpback whale suddenly jumped out of the water, swallowed Adrian and his kayak , and then disappeared under the waves. Adrian thought he was going to die in the whale's belly, but the humpback whale soon surfaced again and vomited him out , and the father and son finally returned to shore unharmed.

Adrian was swallowed by a humpback whale and immediately spat out | AP

Whale experts believe that this humpback whale did not intentionally swallow the human, nor did it want to eat the human. It was purely an accident.

Adult humpback whales are longer than buses and can weigh more than 30 tons. They are baleen whales, and their mouths contain hundreds of keratin plates covered with baleen, which allow them to filter out small fish, shrimps and plankton from the large amounts of seawater they swallow . Humans are not on the humpback whale's menu, and this time it probably swallowed a human accidentally, smacked its lips and realized something was wrong, so it immediately spit him out.

Humpback whale opens its mouth | NOAA

This is not the first time that a humpback whale has swallowed a human by mistake. In 2020, a humpback whale accidentally bit two kayakers, and in 2021, another humpback whale accidentally swallowed a diver. In both cases, the humpback whales immediately released the people, and no one was injured . Researchers believe that the human may have been too close to the humpback whale's food at the time, so he was accidentally swallowed into his mouth.

The false face of a blowfly

In order to blend in with termite colonies, a type of fly larvae grew its butt into a termite's face.

A fly larva's butt looks like a termite's face | Roger Vila

Recently, scientists found three fly larvae that had never been seen before in a termite nest in the mountains of Morocco. They looked very strange, with their heads and butts looking like faces, and the fake face on their butts looked exactly like termites - they disguised their breathing holes as termite eyes and their sensory organs as termite antennae.

With this attire, the fly larvae not only escaped the attacks of soldier ants, but also smoothly integrated into the life of the ant colony - they ate the termites' food, and even had the termites comb their hair.

Looks pretty cute | References [3]

In addition to the fake face, the fly larvae also camouflage themselves in terms of smell . The chemical composition of their smell is exactly the same as that of termites, so that termites cannot detect a traitor in the colony. Scientists further studied these fly larvae and found that they belong to the family Calliphoridae, but no other species of Calliphoridae can camouflage themselves in this way. They speculate that this is a new species.

They do well in termite colonies | References [3]

However, the adult form of this species remains a mystery. Scientists have tried to raise them to adulthood in the lab, but they all died. Scientists speculate that there may be some more subtle interactions between the fly larvae and the termites that cannot be replicated in the lab, but are important for their survival.

Male stick insect sterility

When males are no longer needed for reproduction, some male stick insects automatically lose their reproductive function.

A stick insect called Ramulus mikado lives in Japan and reproduces parthenogenetically , which means that only female eggs are needed to develop into offspring, without male fertilization. In stick insect parthenogenesis, most of the offspring are female , and only rare male offspring will appear when chromosome separation is incomplete.

The stick insect Ramulus mikado, with a female on the left and a rare male on the right | Tomonari Nozaki

Will these rare males mate with females and reproduce sexually? To answer this question, in a new study, scientists spent four years to successfully collect seven rare male stick insects.

However, scientists have found that although these male stick insects actively mate with females, they do not produce functional sperm, nor do they pass on male-derived genes to their offspring . In other words, these males mate for nothing, and they actually have no reproductive function at all. At the same time, the organs related to sexual reproduction in female stick insects also show signs of degeneration.

Male stick insects mate normally with females | Tomonari Nozaki et al.

The scientific community generally believes that parthenogenesis has short-term benefits, allowing species to survive in harsh environments or when their numbers are scarce; but the lack of genetic recombination brought about by sexual reproduction may accumulate harmful mutations and affect the long-term survival of the species. However, this stick insect has survived for hundreds of thousands of years . How did they survive to this day? Scientists still don't have an answer.

Rabbit Teeth Recycling

A surprising source of calcium in a rabbit's diet is from their teeth, which they probably eat when they chew their food.

Rabbits' teeth continue to grow, so people believe that they need to eat more calcium-rich green leafy vegetables to maintain the growth of their teeth. But when eating fiber-rich vegetables, they need to chew constantly, which wears out their teeth. So scientists came up with an idea: the high-calcium powder produced by the wear of rabbit teeth can enter the body through chewing, and this calcium can maintain the growth of teeth. Then can't their teeth be recycled?

Rabbits eating a high-fiber diet | Alexis Lours / Wikimedia Commons

To test this idea, scientists fed eight rabbits a diet containing either a calcium supplement or ground rabbit teeth for two weeks. They then analyzed the rabbits' feces to measure their calcium absorption. The results showed that the rabbits that took the calcium supplement digested 20% of the calcium, while the rabbits that ate ground rabbit teeth digested 33% of the calcium . This shows that rabbits can indeed digest and absorb calcium from their own tooth fragments, and get more calcium than they get from food.

Eat eat eat... Like there's my tooth in there?... Eat eat eat eat | Fabien1309 / Wikimedia Commons

This study suggests that rabbits may be able to get calcium from their teeth . However, calcium supplements are often added to regular pet rabbit diets, which may result in excessive calcium intake in pet rabbits. If rabbits have kidney disease, there may be complications, and owners need to pay close attention to their physical condition.

How to get a dog to focus

How to make dogs concentrate and obey instructions? Scientists have found the best way.

In a new study, they put 20 dogs on eye-tracking helmets and asked them to take turns participating in a test. In the test, the scientists placed a bowl on each side, one bowl had food in it, and the other was empty. They tried various instructions : looking at the dog while pointing at the bowl; looking at the bowl and pointing at it at the same time; just looking at the bowl; pretending to throw a ball in the direction of the bowl (but the ball was still in hand); or doing nothing.

Multiple instruction method testing | References [6]

The results showed that the dogs performed best when the person looked at the bowl and pointed at it at the same time - their eyes would move from the person's face to the hand and then to the correct bowl. When they successfully focused their attention on the object pointed by the human, they were more likely to complete the command.

**The dog behaves worst when it sees a fake ball-throwing motion. **It's like when a dog owner teases his dog, the ball is still in his hand, but he makes a throwing motion, and the dog will believe it and rush out, until he realizes he's been tricked.

Throw the ball! Throw the ball! Throw the ball! | Teles / Wikimedia Commons

If a person is looking at a dog while pointing at an object, the dog will keep eye contact with the owner and not pay any attention to the object ; until the person turns his eyes to the object and the eye contact with the dog is interrupted, the dog will naturally shift its attention to the finger and the object it is pointing to.

Therefore, if you want your dog to pick up an object, looking at and pointing at the object is the best way to get your dog's attention.

References

[1] https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(25)00002-8

[2] https://apnews.com/article/chile-kayaking-tourism-whale-b0cafde4b640326f20a9da28003d6c26

[3 https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(25)00007-7

[4] https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.4522

[5] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090023324002077

[6] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2024.2765

Author: Cat Tun

Editor: Mai Mai

This article comes from GuokrNature (ID: GuokrNature)

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