hello tweets.

for those of you who only want to read about local birds, please
accept my apologies for this message about an exotic vampire bird!

regards,

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
<><><>Graduate School: it's not just a job, it's an indenture!<><><>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 08:31:58 -0700
Subject: [Fwd: Good Samaritans are really vampires]

>
>
>
> Red-billed oxpeckers were once thought to help large African mammals
> by eating the ticks on their hides, although it had been suspected
> that the relationship is more sinister. So Paul Weeks of Cambridge
> University chased off oxpeckers that tried to land on one group of
> oxen in Zimbabwe, but allowed the birds to settle on another group.
> After a month, both groups had just as many ticks (Behavioral Ecology,
> vol 11, p 154). Instead of helping the animals, the birds spent much
> of their time picking at the oxen's wounds. "They return to the site
> of the wound and chisel away at the scab until the blood is flowing
> freely. We had a donkey with a hole in its leg that you could insert a
> finger into," says Weeks.
>
> From New Scientist magazine, 29 April 2000.
>
> 5. http://www.newscientist.com/
>