On Birds of Many Colors, Lice Dress the Part

By SINDYA N. BHANOO

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/science/07obparasite.html?_r=1&ref=animals

From a research study it has been proven that white lice choose light birds as their prey and dark lice choose dark lice. Basically, this is a form of camouflage even though they’re the predator and the bird is the prey. The reason for the need for using camouflage is that birds often go through and clean their feathers, and they are more likely to see the opposite color lice than their own feathers. However, another research has proven that lice on a bird’s head are varied in color, but mostly black. This is because a bird can’t get to its own head, so the lice are basically safe. Dr. Bush believes that darker lice may have an evolutionary advantage. However, the reason for most lice being dark is unknown.

I thought this article was pretty cool, and in a way very interesting. Something I noticed immediately was that it’s not only the prey that uses camouflage; the predator can use it too. I found the example with parasites very convincing and it really proved that point that many different animals use camouflage as a survival technique. Before when I thought of camouflage I mainly imagined rattle snakes and frogs on leaves. This article shows that we can even have tiny organisms use this blending in technique on our own bodies. One of my questions as I was reading this article was “How about parrots and colorful birds that are somewhere in between black or white?” Maybe these birds already have killed most of the parasites living on them, maybe the parasites also can be different colors and maybe this just means that the birds’ heads are full of parasites. Another thing I thought about was that other birds could peck parasites away from a bird’s head. Then a bird’s head wouldn’t be a very clever place to stay for parasites- they could get killed anyway. Life as a parasite must be tough.