Vultures use face flushing technique for instant status updates
Rapid color changes of skin used for interaction and displays of dominance
2010-10-07
(Press-News.org) Tech savvy humans who use social media sites to instantly update their 'statuses', may be behaving like vultures who use 'face flushing' as a visible way of instantly updating their own status when interacting with peers and rivals. Research, published in Ethology, reveals how the ability to rapidly change skin colour is a key form of interaction for vultures, especially for displays of dominance.
The ability to rapidly change skin colour has been well documented in reptiles and fish, which use specialist cells to disperse and concentrate pigments. However, the ability can also be found in some mammals and bird species which exhibit bare skin, such as the vulture.
"Vultures have un-feathered sections of skin on their heads which can become bright red when blood flow is increased, a technique known as flushing," said Dr Andrew Bamford from Nottingham University. "The advantage in using their bare skin as a signal is that colour changes can occur more rapidly than in feathers or fur, provide up-to-date information on status."
Dr Bamford and co-authors studied Lappet-faced vultures, Aegypius tracheliotos in northern Namibia to discover how this face flushing ability is used. The team placed food at spots where vultures are known to gather at sunrise and monitored the wild birds' interactions.
The team found that adults with flushed heads won the majority of social interactions against adults with pale heads and juveniles. However, adults with pale heads were not successful against juveniles.
The team also discovered that a previously unnoticed blue colouration also has an impact on the outcome of interactions. Adults with blue throats won the majority of their interactions with pale or red throated individuals.
"Our study has shown colouration correlates with the outcome of interactions in gatherings of lappet-faced vultures," concluded Bamford. "Previously interaction was thought to depend on aggressive behavior, but face flushing status plays an important part in the initiation of, and response to, interaction from other vultures."
INFORMATION: END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-10-07
An active stellar nursery lies hidden inside a massive dark cloud rich in molecules and dust in the constellation of Monoceros. Although it appears close in the sky to the more familiar Orion Nebula it is actually almost twice as far from Earth, at a distance of about 2700 light-years. In visible light a grouping of massive hot stars creates a beautiful collection of reflection nebulae where the bluish starlight is scattered from parts of the dark, foggy outer layers of the molecular cloud. However, most of the new-born massive stars remain hidden as the thick interstellar ...
2010-10-07
Researchers in India have demonstrated that producing nanoscopic crystals of a pharmaceutical product can allow the medication to be absorbed by the gut even if the drug is not soluble in water.
Research suggests that more than half of the medicinal drugs being developed by the pharmaceutical industry dissolve only very weakly in water, if at all. This is a major problem for administering such drugs as it means they are not effective if taken by mouth. The industry has developed many approaches to addressing this problem, such as adding a small quantity of an organic ...
2010-10-07
The Sun's activity has recently affected the Earth's atmosphere and climate in unexpected ways, according to a new study published today in the journal Nature. The study, by researchers from Imperial College London and the University of Colorado, shows that a decline in the Sun's activity does not always mean that the Earth becomes cooler.
It is well established that the Sun's activity waxes and wanes over an 11-year cycle and that as its activity wanes, the overall amount of radiation reaching the Earth decreases. Today's study looked at the Sun's activity over the period ...
2010-10-07
Air pollution has already been linked to a range of health problems. Now, a ground-breaking new study suggests pollution from traffic may put women at risk for another deadly disease. The study, published in the prestigious journal Environmental Health Perspectives, by researchers from The Research Institute of the MUHC (RI MUHC; Dr. Mark Goldberg), McGill University (Drs. Goldberg, Dan Crouse and Nancy Ross), and Université de Montréal (Dr. France Labrèche), links the risk of breast cancer – the second leading cause of death from cancer in women – to traffic-related air ...
2010-10-07
VTT printed the paper with antibodies that react to the sample. The test result can be read in the form of a line, for example, which either does or does not appear depending on the sample – just like in the pregnancy tests already familiar to consumers. It is also possible to print instructional images or text, for example, either on or alongside the test.
Printed paper test can be used to test quickly and easily for the presence of a given substance. The test can be adapted to different purposes by exchanging the identifying antibody printed on the paper for another, ...
2010-10-07
CHAPEL HILL – A clinical trial designed to replace the genetic defect causing the most common form of muscular dystrophy has uncovered an unexpected aspect of the disease. The trial, based on therapy designed by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine, showed that some patients mount an immune response to the dystrophin protein even before they have received the gene therapy.
The puzzling results, which came from trials at Columbus Children's Hospital in Ohio, suggest that the immune systems of a number of patients -- once thought ...
2010-10-07
Insecure Web browsers and the growing number of complex applets and browser plug-in applications are allowing malicious software to spread faster than ever on the Internet. Some websites are installing malicious code, such as spyware, on computers without the user's knowledge or consent.
These so-called "drive-by downloads" signal a shift away from using spam and malicious e-mail attachments to infect computers. Approximately 560,000 websites -- and 5.5 million Web pages on those sites -- were infected with malware during the fourth quarter of 2009.
A new tool that ...
2010-10-07
It's an experience shared by everyone: You run into someone you know, but his or her name escapes you.
Now, Temple psychologist Ingrid Olson has found a way to improve the recall of proper names.
Olson dedicates her research to understanding human memory. In a recent study, she found that electric stimulation of the right anterior temporal lobe of the brain improved the recall of proper names in young adults by 11 percent. Her study appears this month in the journal Neuropsychologia.
"We know a lot about how to make people's memory worse, but we don't know very ...
2010-10-07
Fish byproducts may be a new source of fish feed, thanks to research by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-funded scientists in Hawaii.
Research scientist Dong-Fang Deng and her colleagues with the Oceanic Institute in Waimanalo, Hawaii, are collaborating with USDA food technologist Peter Bechtel to develop the new fish feeds. Bechtel is with the USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Subarctic Agricultural Research Unit in Kodiak, Alaska. ARS is the USDA's principal intramural scientific research agency.
The scientists are taking fish parts that would normally ...
2010-10-07
In order to track down pathogens and render them harmless, the immune system must be able to recognize myriad different foreign substances and react to them. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and the Centre for Biological Signalling Studies BIOSS at the University of Freiburg have discovered how the immune system's B-cells can be activated by numerous substances from our environment. The receptor molecules on the surface of the B-cells are only activated when the receptor subunits separate following the binding of foreign substances. These findings ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Vultures use face flushing technique for instant status updates
Rapid color changes of skin used for interaction and displays of dominance
