{"id":1993,"date":"2025-01-25T11:10:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T11:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/snakeskin-its-fashionable-and-it-scares-predators-away-from-bird-nests\/"},"modified":"2025-01-25T11:10:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-25T11:10:55","slug":"snakeskin-its-fashionable-and-it-scares-predators-away-from-bird-nests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.itshrt.com\/worldnews\/snakeskin-its-fashionable-and-it-scares-predators-away-from-bird-nests\/","title":{"rendered":"Snakeskin: It\u2019s Fashionable, and It Scares Predators Away From Bird Nests"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In 1889, the naturalist Allan Octavian Hume wrote that he was puzzled by macabre decorations he observed in many birds\u2019 nests: strips of dried snakeskin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cAre birds superstitious, I wonder? Do they believe in charms?\u201d he wrote in \u201c<a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/details\/nestseggsofindia02hume\/page\/n5\/mode\/2up\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds<\/a>.\u201d If not, why were so many birds using pieces of snakeskin to adorn their nests? Hume and several of his contemporaries had a hypothesis: The snakeskin scared away predators.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">A new study suggests that they were onto something: After analyzing century-old records of birds\u2019 nests and observing over 140 nests with and without snakeskin, <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.journals.uchicago.edu\/doi\/abs\/10.1086\/733208\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">researchers reported last month<\/a> in The American Naturalist that in some types of nests, the presence of snakeskin greatly reduced the risk that predators would take the eggs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">All reptiles shed patches of dead skin as they grow, but snakes shed skins off their entire bodies in one big piece. However, finding a snakeskin in the wild can be tricky, said Vanya Rohwer, a curator at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cHow in the world are they finding it? And why do they invest all that time to bring it back to their nests?\u201d Dr. Rohwer said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Rohwer delved into digitized historical records of birds\u2019 nesting behaviors, including handwritten observations of nests from over a century ago. He and his colleagues determined that cavity nesters \u2014 birds that build their nests in holes in structures like trees and cliffs \u2014 are six and a half times more likely to incorporate snakeskin into their nests than species that create more \u201cclassic\u201d cup-shaped nests.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Based on this information, Dr. Rohwer devised a series of experiments to \u201ctry and understand what the benefits of shed snakeskin might be.\u201d He surveyed the microbes and larger parasites in nests with and without snakeskin to see if the skin warded off critters like fleas and mites or reduced the nest\u2019s harmful microbes. There didn\u2019t seem to be any correlations. \u201cThe other idea that we looked at was a nest predation idea,\u201d Dr. Rohwer said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">In a forested area called Monkey Run near the Cornell campus in Ithaca, N.Y., Dr. Rohwer put quail eggs into 65 nest boxes, which are like cavity nests, and 80 empty robin\u2019s nests, which are open-cup nests. He added snakeskin to half of the nests and spent the next several weeks checking on them with a ladder. \u201cMy wife nicknamed me Ladder Man,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"imageblock-wrapper\">\n<figure class=\"img-sz-small css-1189og3 e1g7ppur0\" aria-label=\"media\" role=\"group\"><figcaption data-testid=\"photoviewer-children-caption\" class=\"css-13ytnnu ewdxa0s0\"><span class=\"css-jevhma e13ogyst0\">Vanya Rohwer examining nests in the Monkey Run area of Ithaca, N.Y. \u201cMy wife nicknamed me Ladder Man,\u201d he said.<\/span><span class=\"css-14fe1uy e1z0qqy90\"><span class=\"css-1ly73wi e1tej78p0\">Credit&#8230;<\/span><span><span aria-hidden=\"false\">Rachel Rohwer<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">During his stint as Ladder Man, Dr. Rohwer found something surprising: While the snakeskin didn\u2019t seem to make much difference to the safety of the eggs in the open-cup nests, the scaly scraps made a big difference in the nest boxes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cThe cavity nests with snakeskin had a much higher chance of surviving a 14-day incubation period compared to a cavity nest without snakeskin,\u201d he said. In particular, snakeskin seemed to deter small mammals like mice, which are known to take eggs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">This discovery suggested additional questions. \u201cWhat is scary about snakeskin? Is it the smell of snakeskin? Is it the sight of snakeskin to these small mammals?\u201d Dr. Rohwer said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ross Crates, an ecologist at the Australian National University who was not involved in the study, noted that other research had shown that some birds hissed to ward off predators to their nests. \u201cPretending that there\u2019s a snake in the nest in some way is beneficial for these small, hole-nesting birds that have less capacity to actually physically defend the nest against larger, mostly mammalian predators,\u201d Dr. Crates suggested.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Dr. Rohwer said that nests had been overlooked in scientific research, in part because they can be difficult to observe and study. Digitized data sets like the ones he and his colleagues used are helping researchers to make discoveries. \u201cWe\u2019re only now just starting to really look at some of the unique materials in bird nests,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- ItShrt World News -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6606220950177433\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"1882483372\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"\r\n     data-full-width-responsive=\"true\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/25\/science\/snakeskin-birds-nests.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1889, the naturalist Allan Octavian Hume wrote that he was puzzled by macabre decorations he observed in many birds\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1994,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[269,267,265,266,268,264,270,188],"class_list":["post-1993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science","tag-american-naturalist","tag-animal-behavior","tag-birds","tag-reproduction-biological","tag-research","tag-snakes","tag-the-journal","tag-your-feed-science"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Snakeskin: It\u2019s Fashionable, and It Scares Predators Away From Bird Nests - World News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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