ANIMALS

This Bird Allures Its Mate With A Red Throat Sac Shaped Like A Heart

It appears that Valentine’s Day is not only celebrated by humans but also by animals, especially frigatebirds. These majestic males have a unique method of attracting their partners: they possess a large, inflatable throat pouch that resembles a gigantic heart.

These birds are native to the Hawaiian and Galapagos Islands, and they are no different from other birds when it comes to their diet—they primarily consume fish and jellyfish. However, unlike most seabirds, they cannot rest on the water due to their non-waterproof feathers. To overcome this limitation and avoid the need for breaks, they utilize thermal currents to soar and glide, reaching heights of up to 8000 feet. Nevertheless, what truly sets this species apart is their remarkable behavior during the breeding season.

Image source: Frantz Delcroix

The male frigatebirds proudly showcase their extraordinary method of captivating the attention of females—they possess a distinctive red throat pouch that can be inflated, resembling a large, red heart.

Males have these crazy ornaments, for which they are famous,” says Dr. Donald Dearborn, professor of biology at Bates College. “Lots of birds have colorful ornaments, which can be colored feathers or unfeathered, exposed patches of colored skin, but the inflatable aspect of the frigate throat is unusual.”

The pouch is connected to the male frigatebird’s respiratory system, and when he seeks to attract a potential mate, it inflates over a period of approximately 15 to 30 minutes.

During this process, the pouch has two potential roles, as described by Dearborn. Firstly, it acts as a powerful visual signal to attract the females above, somewhat like holding up a massive Valentine’s Day card in the sky. Secondly, it may serve as a resonator for the male’s courtship calls, enhancing the sound and making it more appealing to females. Second, it could serve as a resonator for his courtship calls because, he says, “some data suggest that it resonates or amplifies the bill-rattling noise that they make and that larger throat pouches do this in a way that is more attractive to females.”

Image source: Frantz Delcroix

The vibrant red color is produced by a combination of hemoglobin and carotenoid pigments. “To incorporate carotenoids into the red feathers of a cardinal or the red throat pouch of a frigatebird, that bird has to eat carotenoid-containing plants or eat animals that ate such plants,” Dearborn explains. “In the case of frigatebirds, we suspect that the carotenoids are obtained by eating certain kinds of squid.”

However, it remains uncertain what specifically influences a female’s choice of a particular male, particularly in the Hawaii population that Dearborn examined. “We’ve looked at throat pouch size, color, and damage; body size, symmetry and damage to wing or tail feathers; [and] size and shininess of the iridescent feathers around their neck,” he said.

“She lands beside a particular mate… [and] decides whether he is ‘the one,’” Dearborn explains. “This could happen within a minute or two, or after an hour or more. It’s unclear why it takes a variable amount of time,” he continues. “If she rejects him, she leaves and resumes flying around and the process starts over. If she accepts [him], she stays with him, and they sit together for maybe a day.”

ANIMALS

Amazing Video of Unseen Ocean Creatures in the Ningaloo Canyons

The Schmidt Ocean Institute recently explored the Ningaloo Canyons on the western coast of Australia using a robotic underwater vehicle called the ROV Sebastian. Check out the amazing video of what they discovered in the deep parts of the Indian Ocean.

More info: Youtube

ANIMALS

These Pics Are Art and the Artists Are Insects

Flying insects move so quickly that they are hard to follow, but new technology and some smart ideas have helped Spanish photographer Xavi Bou do just that. After spending 10 years focusing on birds in flight for his Ornithographies project, he turned his attention to insects.

For Entomographies, he uses high-speed video footage taken by Adrian Smith, an insect expert at North Carolina State University, to study and record how insects move. Bou then picks multiple frames and combines them into single images that show the fast movements of one or more insects through space and time.

With Smith’s help, Bou has captured the aerial tricks of wasps, the jumps of leafhoppers, and the fluttering of butterflies in amazing detail. He hopes that by doing this, he can make people more aware of the decline in important insect populations around the world.

1. Zebra longwing

This butterfly, which is common in many areas of the Americas, really fits its name. It can fly very high with just a few flaps of its large wings.