Which bird gives milk. Do birds have milk? We refute seven myths about the life of wild birds

bird's milk mentioned in the tales of many peoples.

Birds of paradise feed their children with this food. A person who has tasted such a delicacy becomes invulnerable to diseases and any weapon. For a long time, people believed that this was just fiction, like a flying carpet or living water.

Scientists who have studied wild pigeons have proven that this is not the case. As it turned out, the pigeon chicks could not be fed seeds of various plants.

How does a dove do it? Fat accumulates on the walls of the pigeon goiter while the chicks are hatching. After the chicks hatch from the eggs, a fatty mass appears on the walls of the goiter, which contains the vitamins necessary for the chicks.

In turn, the parents begin to burp pieces of this mass and feed their chicks with it.

Moreover, each bird raises only one chick, and pigeons have more than two chicks. For three weeks, pigeons feed their own children with the food they need, which resembles cottage cheese. This is called bird's milk, about which so many different legends have been written.

Does bird's milk exist? Do magpies really collect shiny things? Does an owlet sitting alone in the forest need to be saved? We deal with the myths about the life of wild birds.

The world of wild birds is a place where there is always a lot of obscure and incomprehensible. And all the incomprehensible people try to explain by all possible methods. Because of this, the perception of wildlife is overgrown with ridiculous myths and prejudices. It was their debunking last Thursday that the ornithologist and specialist of the “Akhovy Bird Batskaushchyny” on environmental issues Semyon Levy at the lecture “Birds and Prejudices”, held in one of the buildings of the Academy of Sciences.

The green portal attended the meeting and now shares with you the myths and their rebuttals.

Owls can't see during the day

In fact, owls see everything perfectly. This opinion is due to the fact that birds are little seen in the daytime. At this time, they usually sit in their natural shelters - hollows or dense crowns of trees with closed or squinted eyes.

They do this because their bright eyes immediately attract unnecessary attention. After all, if the color of the plumage allows them to disguise themselves in the forest, then their eyes will immediately give them away. And if predatory, corvid birds notice owls during the day, they try to drive the owl out of their territory, peck it. Therefore, owls sit in a shelter all day long, squinting their eyes, but at the same time they see everything perfectly.

In general, in birds, vision plays an exceptional role for orientation in space. And unlike humans, who have three peaks of light perception, birds have four such peaks. This is due to the fact that they have four types of photoreceptors - they also see perfectly in the ultraviolet.

An owlet sitting alone in the forest needs to be saved

At a time when owls are already growing chicks, people, having met an owlet in the forest, for some reason believe that he is lost and needs to be saved: take him home, feed and raise a tame owl. I do not know what drives these people, although the desire to help cannot be called bad.

In fact, for birds, this is always a disservice. When owls leave their nest, they usually hide in the canopy of trees. Most often, eared owl chicks are found - they look pretty cute and look like gnomes. And how can you pass by, because next to them there are no parents. Of course, at this time, the parents sit somewhere nearby, not far away, and simply wait out the daytime in order to find the chick in the evening and feed it. Therefore: no one loses chicks and should not be taken home.

Kites prey on chickens

For most people, all birds of prey look the same. It is quite difficult to determine them, only small nuances distinguish one species from another. And you can often hear the lamentations of villagers or farmers that they have got into the habit of catching chickens.

In fact, kites are very rare in our country and they practically do not hunt poultry. They feed more on dead fish or food waste in garbage cans. He can't pull the chicken. But the goshawk can do it. Once in Borisov I observed such a picture: a goshawk with a white chicken in its claws, which was larger than itself, was flying, and 10-15 gray crows were chasing them, trying to take their prey.

Here you can advise those who keep poultry, this is what: if the hawk got into the habit of hunting you, you need to cover the pen with a net on top. Killing a hawk will most often be pointless - a new one will fly in its place, which will occupy an empty hunting area. And will continue to hunt chickens.

Birds have milk

Bird's milk is a fantasy, isn't it? In fact, it is difficult to imagine that a bird can somehow get milk.

Although in some species a secret is secreted in the goiter that looks like a curdled mass - it is called bird's milk. And indeed, during the feeding of chicks, this is especially characteristic of the pigeon-like order, this method is used by parent birds. Birds have some analogue of cow or goat milk. But a man came up with delicious sweets that many people like. But, of course, they have nothing to do with birds.

If a person picks up a chick, the birds will not accept it back

"Chickfall" begins with us from the middle of spring, approximately from April, and ends in July. We at the APB receive many calls that a chick has been found. And when you advise to look for the nest and return it back, people say that they cannot do this, because their parents will not accept him back, he will smell like a man.

In fact, the birds take the chicks back, do not be afraid of this. This is not due to the fact that birds do not have a developed sense of smell. Parents will hear your smell on the chick, but this will not scare them off at all - the motherly instinct will be stronger during this period of the season. This is evidenced by scientists who conducted experiments on rock doves and some types of petrels. According to the results of the experiments, it turned out that gray pigeons by smell can find their dovecotes and their cities from which they were brought.

Magpies love shiny things.

Who dreamed of finding a magpie nest with all the jewelry riches? As a child, I dreamed of finding such a nest. In fact, magpies do not really like shiny things, but they are greedy for soft wire. Somehow these birds manage to collect all the aluminum that is within a kilometer radius of their nest, unless other pairs are competing with them. They collect metal to weave it into their nests. Since the branches are short-lived and rot and break over time, aluminum supports the bird's home for a very long time.

Finnish scientists checked whether the birds really steal gold and jewelry, and laid out bright shiny objects near the nest: foil, jewelry. It turned out that the magpies did not take any of the items left behind.

All the black birds in the city are crows

You can often hear the opinion that all black city birds are crows. Actually it is not. The crow has a black-gray color and this species rarely forms large flocks. Basically, rooks are mistaken for crows.

This raises another question - if it is winter, then what are the rooks now? Everyone remembers Savrasov's painting "The Rooks Have Arrived" - which means they fly away for the winter. And this is also not entirely true. Savrasov painted his picture in the Vologda region, which is located much north of our latitudes. There, rooks are still migratory, and, perhaps, Vologda rooks spend the winter here in Minsk, and capital ones fly to more southern regions. Or maybe stay year-round. It is impossible to say for sure, since we do not ring rooks.

As a child, gobbling up on both cheeks a candy called bird's milk I really thought that birds give, the father said doves, and the mother laughed and said - do not confuse the child. Growing up, I realized that these are fairy tales, and yet my father was right, bird's milk is pigeon's milk.

What is pigeon milk

Where does bird's milk come from?

The birds that feed their chicks are pigeons. True, they feed their newly hatched chicks with a special curd mass, which produced in their goiter. This "baby food" is called bird's or pigeon's milk. Pigeon milk is so nutritious that in the first two days of life, the baby becomes twice as heavy!

To grown up chicks of a dove bird or pigeon milk after a week, it becomes theoretically unnecessary, they feed on plant seeds, although very often you can see how parents feed pigeon milk even on the wing.

Wild pigeons living in Russia.

In the forests of the North Caucasus, a secretive and cautious wood dove, or wityuten, nests. Turtle doves live in gardens and parks throughout Russia, as well as rock pigeons - the most numerous city dwellers among relatives with whom we are all well acquainted.

— 03.05.2010

Here are pink birds paddling through the shallow water on stilts. Ceremonial parade. A frisky run ... Suddenly - stop! - picture pose. The flutter of flaming wings. Above the mass of white and pink bodies - the smooth swaying of hundreds of "question marks" crowned with beaks. On blue water - pink shimmer. Flamingos lek. In their own way, as it was given to them by nature. The ritual of choosing a partner, the marriage ritual...

The place where to stand a pedestal of silt is chosen by the female. They build together, collecting silt. Pebbles, feathers, shells, crumpled stems - everything that lies on the silt is raked into a pile. Silt is fastened by crushing with their feet. A truncated cone grows on viscous mud or from shallow water - a flamingo nest. Grows up to half a meter high. There is a small indentation at the top. It contains two white eggs.

Perched on a pedestal of silt and cross-legged, flamingos take turns hatching chicks. To get up and give way to a partner, a long-legged bird must lean on the ground with its beak.

A red-legged, thick-legged, red- and straight-billed chick broke through the shell and crawled out. And here begins a fabulous miracle: feeding with bird's milk! However, the miracle is not new to us - it was seen in penguins. Something special is happening here: feeding with your own blood! Something about which the old legends vaguely guessed when talking about pelicans. True, they confused the birds, and the method of feeding was guessed inaccurately ...

Leaning gracefully over her red-legged cub, the pink bird opens its black and pink beak, and pink bird's milk flows into the chick's mouth. It contains proteins, vitamins, and 23 percent ... blood. From it and from carotenoids, provitamin A, the color of "bird's milk" in flamingos is light red. This liquid feed concentrate is formed in the esophagus of lactating birds. But how they arrange for themselves "bloodletting" for the benefit of children ...

In childhood, many asked this question when they first tried the Bird's Milk sweets. But how is it really: do birds have milk, how is it obtained, and where do sweets get their name from? We will answer these questions and tell you about other interesting facts in our article. Believe me, you will learn a lot for yourself!

Why was the candy called "Bird's Milk"?

Children often wonder what kind of milk birds give. Adults know for sure that birds don’t give any milk, and it’s definitely not in the composition of sweets. But it is difficult to answer where such a name comes from. A treat appeared in Poland in 1936 under the name “Ptasie Mleczko”. And only in the 1960s, the Rot Front factory launched production in the USSR, simply by translating Bird's Milk into Russian. Many then thought that the name was metaphorical and associated with something very rare and valuable, since such sweets were in a terrible shortage. In fact, the creators were based on old legends and works of ancient Greece. They mention the milk of birds of paradise, which gives almost immortality and is considered a delicacy (ambrosia) of the Gods.

For example, in the old days, when young men wooed girls, they were asked to bring unheard-of gifts as a token of love. The more incredible the gift was, the more likely it was to win the heart of the beauty. But, if the girl did not like the groom, then she asked to get her bird's milk. Thus, she made it clear that he had no chance of becoming her chosen one. This tradition is found in many peoples. There is even such a proverb: "The rich have everything, especially bird's milk." In this way, candy producers wanted to attract the attention of consumers, thereby emphasizing the value and sophistication of taste.

But how much do we know about birds to say with certainty that they cannot produce milk? Let's figure out this difficult issue together!

The whole truth about bird milk

In fact, scientists have proven that some birds can produce milk that is completely different from what we are used to. Bird's milk consists of protein (about 60%), fat (up to 36%), a small amount of carbohydrates (up to 3%), a number of minerals and antibodies, but does not contain lactose and calcium. But like mammalian milk, it contains antioxidants and immunomodulatory proteins that are important for the growth and development of young animals.

Such milk is also called goiter, or pigeon. This secret is secreted by the cells of the goiter or special glands of the esophagus and stomach (depending on the type), it resembles a yellowish curd mass. It is noteworthy that goiter cells react to hormones during lactation in a similar way to the mammary gland. Curd is created from fat-filled cells (at the site of the crop where food is usually stored to soften before digestion) that break open and regurgitate this substance to feed offspring. Birds differ from other animals in that they do not have sweat glands, but they do have the ability to store fat in their outer skin cells (keratinocytes), which act as sweat glands. It has been found that the “lactation” of birds is related to this ability to divide fat cells. Interestingly, both males and females can feed offspring with "bird's milk". Milk is characteristic of representatives of the pigeon family, a number of parrots, flamingos and imperial penguins.

This process is best studied by example. pigeons. They usually lay two eggs. Soon after the chicks hatch from them, the parents begin to feed them with nutritious milk, which begins to be produced two days before the offspring appear. After that, after a week, the chicks switch to eating crushed "adult" food, such as seeds, fruits, insects and other invertebrates. However, if one of the eggs for some reason falls out of the nest, or one chick is born dead, then the remaining chick gets all the "bird's milk", and therefore it grows even faster. By the end of the first week after hatching, this chick will hardly differ in size from its parents. And here is the female penguin lays only one egg, which the male penguin warms with the heat of his body for a long two months until the long-awaited chick appears. After the appearance of the offspring, the caring father nurses him for another month and feeds him with milk along with the mother, who gets food. At flamingos The whole process of breastfeeding is amazing. Their nutritional secret also contains hemoglobin, which indicates the presence of bird blood in the milk, and this gives it a reddish color.

Interestingly, a number of studies were carried out in 1952, when chickens were fed pigeon milk, and their growth rate increased by as much as 38%! At the same time, attempts to reproduce goiter milk artificially did not lead to success. The chicks fed by the analogue either died or were too weak. Accordingly, this nutrient has also been shown to contain certain unique antibodies.

You did not even suspect that these animals also give milk

We know how important milk is for babies. It is a rich combination of nutrients that are necessary for the development of the child and his immunity. In the entire animal kingdom, only one group of animals produces milk for their offspring: the mammals, to which we belong. The milk of mammals is considered to be real milk. However, some living organisms have secretions that strongly resemble milk and are intended for feeding. This "false milk" is not like cow or human milk, and it is not produced in the same way. But it serves the same purpose: it feeds baby animals until they are old enough to take care of themselves.

cockroaches. Yes, you heard right: some cockroaches feed their young with milk. One such example is the beetle cockroach Diploptera punctata, or Pacific cockroach.
Most female cockroaches lay their eggs in a kind of sac that exits the body before the eggs hatch. After the young cockroaches hatch from their eggs, they fight to find food. But the female Pacific cockroach beetle takes a different approach to childcare. Instead of hatching from a clutch, the embryos develop fully inside her body. As soon as the embryos have fully formed digestive organs, they begin to drink "milk" produced by special crystals (cells), and quickly gain weight. Since young cockroaches get a lot of food while still in their mother's body, they are more developed and mature at the time of birth. Such an interesting feature of these cockroaches attracted the attention of Indian scientists. The crystals of these cockroaches, as it turned out, contain a complete set of nutrients: fats, proteins, carbohydrates and amino acids. This product has a high calorie content, so it would be useful in conditions of overpopulation and long-distance space flights. Researchers are now trying to reproduce the substance in the laboratory.

false scorpions, or false scorpions. Like Pacific beetle cockroaches, female pseudoscorpions produce a milky-like substance. But it does not come out of her womb, but out of her ovaries. The female carries her fertilized eggs in a special pouch attached to her abdomen. Once the babies hatch, they stay in the pouch and feed on their mother's milk. Even after they leave the pouches, they continue to ride on their mother's back until they are old enough to live on their own. Pseudoscorpions are 2-3 mm long. They are often found in rooms with dusty books, which is why they are sometimes referred to as "book scorpions".

Discus fish. Their milk is actually a mucus-based secretion that coats the bodies of both parents. It is rich in proteins and antibodies. A few days after the young fish hatch from their eggs, they attach themselves to their parents and feed on the slime secretions that cover their bodies. During the first two weeks, they spend most of their time feeding their offspring. Feeding lasts 5-10 minutes, after which one of the parents dumps the young on the other parent. From the third week, parents stop feeding. They swim for longer periods, forcing young fish to look for other sources of food. This example is very similar to how mammals take care of their children.

Legless African amphibians, or caecilians. Vertebrate amphibians are very similar to worms. Most species guard their eggs until they hatch and then leave them. But caecilians native to southeastern Kenya have developed a more sophisticated parenting style. When the offspring hatch from their eggs, they are completely immature and completely dependent on their mother. To feed her children, the female caecilian produces a thick layer of protein and fat on the top layer of her skin. Newborns clean this layer of skin with the help of special suction cups that look like small teeth. The layer of nutrients is so dense that in a week the young individual increases in length by about 11%. This greatly affects the mother. After one week of feeding, she loses about 14% of her body weight.

The world around us still holds many mysteries. It would seem that it is well studied, but something new always opens up. Did you know that some birds actually have milk?

Do birds give milk?