Watching news this morning. Apparently current day 28 parrot wings and tail feathers are on average 5mm longer than the species recorded approximately 40 years ago.
Science group blamed this on climate change sighting the reason was that Darwin Theory applied to show that the wings and tails had grown lager over this time to allow better blood cooling in the new climate.
Baw haw haw haw. Is there anything not yet claimed to be blamed on climate change .

One would hazard a guess that just like Kangaroos located on plush gold courses are larger than their bush cousins.
Reason being the fodder is lush green nitrogen enhanced grasses for the roo's to fest on, thus the difference in size.
The same could be said of the parrots, where the cereal crops now are more abundant, allowing the birds to grow larger in size with the abundance of grain now available, in comparison to 40 odd years ago.

Climate change

Dunno about cereal crops as tucker for 28's, more likely fruit from trees in orchards.

Same principal applies though - much better food supply means healthier and stronger 28's.

We noticed years ago that the 28's that were ripping into the local orchards were getting bigger and more aggressive,
I thought they were cross breeds or birds from outlying areas moving in for a feed and pushing out the local [smaller] birds.

Now, I reckon that after many generations of good living they just got bigger, meaner and pushier than our local variety.

Friends of ours had to scare [not terribly effective], net their trees [expensive and not very efficient] and shoot the 28's and their "bigger cousins" or they lost huge amounts of fruit.

The losses were not too bad while their kids were home as between us all, we could keep numbers down with air rifles / .22's / .410 and 12 gauges.

Once the kids moved to the city and shooting slowed down, the losses were too great [as much as 80%]
Ended up ripping out most of the mandarins, oranges, peaches, nashis etc. and selling up and got out of the game.

I am seeing way less 28's than I used to.


Anyway, since when did the blood flow to the very tips of feathers? Any avian biologistiology people here...?

It doesn't, I used to breed cockatiels and had to cut their primary wing feathers (about 2/3rds removed) to keep them from flying into the windows, never any blood.
Similar to cutting dog's nails, you can see where the blood stops before cutting.

I'm just a humble fridgy, and I would never say that a scientific study based on empirical evidence (observation and experimentation) was wrong, if indeed this parrot wing conclusion is based on empirical evidence, however, in general:

> birds can't sweat therefore they must employ a range of techniques to disperse heat, depending on the species and their environment.
> In almost all species, their primary method of cooling is breathing, in the same way dogs pant, a bird will increase its breathing to increase the flow of cool air throughout its body
> Birds are also capable of dissipating heat via their skin, if they are capable of exposing that skin, again this is very dependant upon the species, and when this technique is used, it generally utilises a part of their anatomy associated with the breast bone or sternum rather than the wings
> Feathers do and excellent job of retaining heat and stopping cooler air to get into the body.


If this theory related to a flying mammal, it would seem to me to be more viable, since bats do not have insulating feathers and are capable of regulating the flow of blood into their wing to regulate temperature.

But the roll of wing increased surface area, as a method of increasing cooling effect, seems dubious when natural selection could probably have increased the effectiveness of the birds primary cooling mechanisms rather than invent one that never really existed in the first place.

You can take what I said with a grain of salt, I'm just a tradie, so what would I know?

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I'd never heard of a 28 parrot- thought it might have been some "new model"....

Must be a WA thing.

Australian ringneck - Wikipedia
<div class="s">
<div class="f kv _SWb">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_ringneck

The Australian ringneck (Barnardius zonarius) is a parrot native to Australia. The name of the twenty-eight parrot is an onomatopoeic derived from its distinctive 'twentee-eight' call.

Clarence

Do bones shrink when kept in a museum for 40 years?

I know who to blame for my weight increase for the last 40 years, bloody global warming!

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clarence said..
I'd never heard of a 28 parrot- thought it might have been some "new model"....

Must be a WA thing.

Australian ringneck - Wikipedia
<div class="s">
<div class="f kv _SWb">en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_ringneck

They are actually called 28's because the French explorers thought their call sounds like 'vingt-huit' meaning twenty eight. It sounds remarkably like their call when pronounced in French.