Monday, March 7, 2011

Insight on Weird Wax Eating Birds

Birds eat many kinds of food, some of which draw heavily on our own palettes, especially things like berries and fruits, nuts, cereals and even fish, crabs, molluscs and crustaceans. But aside from sushi lovers, they prefer most of us these types of foods later in at least one format partially cooked. Then there are the birds that eat almost all things are to be directly ugly.
It is doubtful that you even know a few people who drool over the raw meat of any kind or appetite for insects or invertebrates sticky, leave only carrion. Of course there are many people in this word that eat road kill and other things firmly planted in the weird category, but generally we can chalk culturally isolated and curiosities of the world.
One thing that some birds are known to eat just like we humans do not consume, at least not for food, wax. Wax in the natural and generally refers to a class of organic compounds which are insoluble in water, solid and brittle cold, solid but malleable at room temperature, and melt into a liquid with low viscosity at high temperatures. Wax composed of long chain fatty acids and is very difficult for most organisms to digest. Besides its limited aspect of things like chewing gum or packaging of certain types of cheese wax is not something we eat, but rather something we have found all sorts of creative practical applications for. Birds can always count on him to challenge the fundamental logic or provide exceptions to general rules, and wax eating is no exception.
There are actually several groups of birds that eat voluntarily and is able to metabolize adult. Many seabirds such as petrels and puffins, indirect, get their energy from wax in the crustaceans they eat. Then there are a handful of land birds, some species such as warblers and swallowing, gorging on fruit wax. The alimentary canal of these strange birds are characterized by high levels of secretion of the gallbladder, a higher concentration of bile salts in the gut and a relatively slow passage of food acquired lipids. There is also evidence that these birds are a kind of ruminants like cows, such as wax partially digested compounds somehow return to the gizzard of the small intestine of a second or third round of digestion.
As amazing as all that is none of these birds eat just wax, they are somewhat forced to eat because it's an inevitable part of real food, they prefer. Enter Honey Guide (Indicatoridae), a family of 17 species found only in Africa and is classified in the same order as the peaks (Piciformes). Absolutely spectacular in appearance and content of the size of song birds are birds mostly insectivorous, but they are famous for their strange behavior by eating pure beeswax honeycomb. Furthermore, these strange birds seek the help of honey loving animals such as honey badgers and even people by calling their attention to the location of a hive, as their assistant open the hive to make honey and let the comb wax and bee larvae in Honey Guide.

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