Sugar-laden Drinks Causing Slight Obesity Epidemic in New Zealand Birds
Travel News — By Ben Van Loon on August 26, 2010 at 11:00 amIn news straight out of the ‘not that surprising’ files, greedy little birds becoming progressively fatter by stealing sugar-water from their avian companions.
On the New Zealand island of Tiritiri Matangi lies an example of true human conservation efforts. The island, which covers a small area of 220 hectares, was nearly 95% deforested between ’84 and ’94. Seeing how the land’s flora and fauna were suffering, conservationists intervened, and over the past fifteen years, have managed to reforest 60% of the land, and are leaving the rest untouched for indigenous grassland species.
One of the island’s main bird species, the hoppy little Stitchbird, or Hihi, has drawn particular interest to researchers and bird-lovers alike. After becoming nearly extinct, a few small populations have managed to survive or be reintroduced to life in the wild, with one of those places being Tiritiri.
In studying the birds, researchers from Massey University have been setting out small retainers of sugar-water for the Hihis over the past few years. However, like grown-up dogs stealing kitten food, the similiarly-sized New Zealand Bellbird, or Korimako, have also been sipping at the Hihi’s stash for the past few years.
This isn’t problematic, but simply requires the researchers to set out more sugar-water receptacles. They do this so the Hihis have enough to eat, because they need it, and the Korimakos don’t. In fact, the Korimakos have been getting fat off of the sucrose-heavy waters. And as researchers say, there’s nothing wrong with the Korimako birds, aside from being slightly overweight.
Maybe there is a lesson here, but we’ll wait for researchers in New Zealand to come out with avian insulin injections to start before saying anything else.
[Image: zedzeek]
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