A trip to the zoo today. All but one of the moron Guineas managed to get over the fence and onto the shore of the pond with the waterfowl. The genius guinea that stayed on the right side followed them about, trying to flock despite the fence.
Pardon the digression.
Many of the waterfowl were standing about on one leg. Why do they do this? I can’t stand on one leg for a sobriety test, let alone a nap.
I take it you’re not standing on one now.
Actually, I am sitting.
My parrot does it to keep one foot toasty warm at any moment.
Bingo, that’s it.
I’m not just trying to be funny. Humans can sit because we have asses.
Birds have only the two legs. Their tails and their general center of gravity preclude sitting. Lying down is impractical for an animal that must spread its wings and get airborne the instant a predator appears. Some parrots lie on their backs while playing, but they only do so when they feel entirely safe.
As with your mouse hand getting carpal tunnel, a bird cannot hold his foot and leg in the sam position all the time without getting various syndromes (arthritis is common in birds caged with only one diameter of perch to choose, for example). So when they are relaxing, birds will often lift one leg and fold it under to get a break from all the standing, if only on one side. Eventually the birds will shift around a bit and switch legs. When trouble nears, they’ll put both legs on the ground, in case they need to launch themselves.
Sailboat
Sailboat, that was a mighty fine analysis.
I read a fine discussion on this very topic many years ago, I can’t remember where. Many ideas were advanced, the most attractive to me being that it halved the chances of fish bumping into their legs, which might feel icky.
But the winning explanation was that water birds raise one leg because if they raised two they would fall down.
Thanks.
Although…Some of these guys were asleep on one leg. Some were asleep sitting down. One duck was awake sitting down. Fed him or her through the fence, but again I digress.
Of course! Thanks!
What I find rather amusing is how certain birds don’t seem to want to give up their “one-leg” status. I’ll be walking along the beach, and as I approach a bunch of sandpipers, some will start running, some will take wing, and others will hop-hop-hop-hop-hop. Sometimes it turns out that the hoppers only have one leg, but most of the time, they have their full compliment of lower extremities. Hmmm, perhaps the hopping behavior is what leads to single-limbedness?
One of the guys I saw has a dish named after him, Mandarin Duck. Maybe they are easy to catch.
While I have no dubt that sailboat is correct, I have to note the ollowing explanation, which I found many years ago in T.H. White’s The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts, his translation of a 12th century Latin Bestiary:
Here White adds a helpful footnote:“When the stone is dropped through drowsiness, this akes up the sentinel. He can be seen holding one in he illustration.” Indeed he is, holding one foot high and close to the body with its stone, and standing on one leg.
Ever since I read that, many years ago, I’ve taken close study of one-legged cranes, flamingos, and the like. I’ve never yet seen one holding a stone in the raised leg. But I don’t really expect to – although the bestiaries are surprisingly correc some of the time, they’re more often amazingly wrong.
While this may also be true, birds use the one-leg trick in temperature regulation.
Birds’ legs are not covered in their coat of feathers, and they lose more heat through them than through their body. To conserve heat, one leg is tucked up into the insulating feathers, leaving the other to do the standing. This cuts in half the amount of heat lost through the legs, and is particularly important in shorebirds because water is such an effective conductor of heat.
Shouldn’t this be in GQ?
Some desert lizards stand around on two “opposite” legs because that sand is freaking hot. It has no bearing on the discussion at hand, but it’s kinda neat.
Moving thread from IMHO to General Questions.
There is nothing that precludes most birds from sitting down, and they do so regularly. This is easiest to see with long-legged birds like waders or rattites but all birds I know of sit on a regular basis.
If, as you claim, birds are precluded from sitting down then how do you think they incubate their eggs?
Spreading the winds and getting airborn is not significantly more difficult frm a sitting position than form a standing one. The fist move of a frightened bird is to flap the wings anyway, which instantly lifts the body high further off the ground than standing height anyway. I cna;t see how sitting or standing could have any effects at all, though I’m willing to believe it might make a milliseconds diffence in reaction time.
I’m not entriely certain why birds stand on one leg, and I’ve heard all sorts of explanations. But it is definitely not because birds cannot sit. Of course birds can sit.
My parrot only goes in the one leg position when he is content and happy. It’s a sign of relaxation.
As for the sentry birds dropping the pebble, for many birds (parrots, at least) the curled fist is the default, relaxed position. It’s what allows them to sleep perched on a branch. So, they’d be sound asleep holding that pebble tight.
They squat.
Birdss who “sit” on egggs are not resting on their rump. They squat on their belly and fan out their belly feathers.
It’s not a good position to get away from predators. The birds currently squatting (brooding) on eggs here in my bird room (where the computer also is) squat only when they have to, on their eggs, and not at any other time, whether or not it would be comrfortable. When distressed, for example, if a door slams, they get off their eggs and climb to a perch, in case they need to flee.
Similarly, if one actually observes birds, one would see that when launching themselves into the air, they crouch down for a split-second and throw themselves up with their legs as the wings begin the first downstroke. Sure, when they’re in a big hurry, it’s hard to see this. But when they aren’t in such a hurry it’s more observable; for example, a parrot indicating he wants to hop up on your shoulder will often crouch down a bit, raise his wings in a v, hold his body level, and lean toward you. If you hold out your hand to him, he’ll spring up on the first downflap and hop on.
And whenever new people arrive, or a dog barks, or there is a strange noise anywhere near, all our birds lower their resting leg to put both legs firmly on their perch even as they cock their heads to check out what’s going on. It’s a gesture of wariness in the birds I’ve known.
I’ll buy the thermoregulation idea, though; certainly behaviors can have more than one positive benefit.
Sailboat
Dude this is semantic nonsense.
sit ( P ) Pronunciation Key (st)
v. sat, (st) sit·ting, sits
v. intr.
- a. To rest with the hindquarters lowered onto a supporting surface. Used of animals.
The birds in those photos I linked to are quite clearly resting with their hindquarters lowered onto a supporting surface. They are sitting.
That’s anecdote, not exactly the best type of evidence. I might point out that in over 10 years working as an ecologists in the field I have noticed that the vast majority of bird rest with the hindquarters lowered onto a supporting surface on a regular basis. But once again that’s just anecdote. However I’ve also provided photographs of brids ding so, which is not anecdote.
Have you ever been to the seashore on a windy day? Have you never noticed seagulls sitting on the ground, resting with their hindquerters lowers onto a supporting surface?
Can we please have a reference to suport the claim that they do so in order to flee, rather than in order to fight, or in order to lure away predators, or in order to see better? How do you know what the bird’s reasoning is, or even if their is any reasoning going on?
Methinks you anthropomorphise too much.
In my 10 years working as a field ecologist I’ve observed birds of al sorts under all sorts of conditions. Birds utililise all sorts of techniques when launching themselves into the air. The method you describei s certainly one of them, but not the only one and possibly not even the most common method.
I see, so a domestic bird that has been trained to indicate he wants to be picked up performs the action it has been trained to perform. This demsonstrates the behaviour of all birds. By this logic wolves must pick up bowls in their mouths before they begin a hunt, after al that’s what my dog does when he wants food.
Once again, you extend analogy too far. In the wild parrots will take of in all sorts of ways, often by simply falling of the branch.
But seriously, we can settle this really easily. You made the claim that birds are incapable of resting with their hindquarters on the ground, in contradiction to the photographic evidence of birds quite clearly resting with their hindquarters on the ground. This is GQ, not IMHO, so I’m going to call you out.
Please provide a reference for your claim that birds can not rest with the hindquarters lowered onto a supporting surface.
Please provide a refernce that birds find it significantly harder to get airborne form a sitting position.