Blowing smoke on old ideas

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  • 24/01/2018

    As each year passes, the once celebrated barriers between man and the other animals become less secure. Once we were the only tool makers, once we were the ones who discovered drugs or used technology. This report is about how finches commandeer cigarette butts for a new purpose.

    That idea has been around, though never proved, since 2012. This was when Dr Suárez-Rodríguez showed that nests which had butts woven into them were less likely to contain bloodsucking parasites than were nests that did not. What she was unable to show was whether the nest-builders were collecting discarded cigarettes deliberately for their parasite-repelling properties, or whether that parasite protection was an accidental consequence of butts being a reasonably abundant building material.

    Economist.

    And finches, again! Where would  biology be without Darwin’s finches?