Baby Birds & Moms

[Jinx]

Is it fact that a baby bird adopts the first thing (or, living thing) it sees as its mother? I thought this was just a common concept portrayed in cartoons, but I understand scientists accept this is truth?

[kanicbird]

Originally Posted by Jinx

Is it fact that a baby bird adopts the first thing (or, living thing) it sees as its mother? I thought this was just a common concept portrayed in cartoons, but I understand scientists accept this is truth?

From someone who worked at a birds of prey raptor center, yes, if there was no mother then the caregiver would use a bird puppet to care for the chick as they didn't want to have the chick associate a person with mom.

Also you may want to Google parasitic breading, starlings are famous for it. Basically drop the egg in another birds nest and let them raise your chick. The chick obviously takes the surrogate as mom, and the mom takes the chick as her young.

[DrFidelius]

It's called "imprinting" and Konrad Lorenz did some great work on it back in the stone age. Remember, there are a lot of different species of birds, and not all show the same behaviours as others.

[constanze]

You never saw that famous b/w movie of Konrad Lorenz with his Jesus sandals walking around on the meadows of Lake Starnberg, followed by a group of geese ducklings who thought him his mom? (The descendants of these geese still live there). Some birds even imprint on inanimate objects like a bouncing ball.

In nature, this does make some sense: in all likelihood, a freshly hatched chick will see its mother first.
If the mother is not present during hatching, and the chick imprints on another gentle creature, it still has a survival chance.
If the only thing around is a predator, the chick has no survival chance anyway.

Birds are hardwired by instinct in simple ways for a lot of behaviour to make sure that survival works and is quick. The disadvantage is that these species take longer to adapt to changed circumstances than species where parents have to teach the younglings.