Crafty curlews: birds eavesdrop on prairie dog calls to evade predators | Animal behaviour

Prairie dogs bark to warn the presence of predators with different screams, depending on whether the threat is in the air or whether the threat is in the air.

However, his warnings seem to help a vulnerable pasture bird.

Curlews, on Thursday, according to research published in the magazine Animal Behavior, the US Prairie dog colonies overheard the alarms, they realized that they could jump for them.

“Prairie dogs in Montana at the National Zoo and Protection Biology Institute of Smithsonian, Andy Boyce, said,” Prairie dogs, for almost any predators you can think of, the menu-gold eagles, red-tailed hawks, foxes, porsuks, even big snakes, “he said. Such animals also gladly dismiss grassland nesting birds such as long postpaid folds, so that birds have adapted.

Previous studies, Ornithologist Emily Williams, the University of Georgetown, who was not included in the study, showed other bird species often overheard other bird species.

However, so far, scientists have documented only a few examples of birds secretly entering mammals.

“This does not necessarily mean that it is rare in the wild nature,” he said, “It just means we haven’t worked yet.”

Prairie Dogs, a kind of ground squirrels, lives in large colonies with a series of nests that can extend to kilometers underground, especially in the large US plains. When they hear each other’s shells, they either watch warnings or dive into their nests.

“These small shells are very noisy; they can carry a quite long way,” he said, “

Long postpaid curvy curves incubates in short grass rural nests and eggs in a nest of a earth. When Prairie hears the dog alarm, he responds to the ground by bringing his beak and abdomen closer to the ground. In this squatting position, the birds said, “They rely on the incredible camouflage of their feathers to be invisible in the plains, Dre Dreelin said.

Researchers have created a false predator by connecting an installment porning to a remote controlled vehicle, towards the Curlew nests on the countryside of North-Middle Montana, sometimes quietly and sometimes recorded Prairie playing sharks.

When the shells were stolen, Curlews quickly leaned on the grass, hiding while the porsuk was about 160ft away. Without shells, the remote -controlled Porsuk entered about 52ft of the nests before the Curlews perceived the danger themselves.