How does this bird manage to survive this dreadful weather? Well, it works hard for its survival.
Apparently non-migratory birds, particularly small size birds (ie sparrows) demonstrates a unique build of physiology that allow them to survive harsh winters.
From a surface approach, it is the insulating down that isolates their body from the external environment which provides heat energy reservations. Next, comes to the behavioral approach, the birds have to feed through the daylight hours with a large quantity of food as much as 30% of their body size, which is essentially necessary for them to go through the cold and long night.
That being said, you may wonder HOW on earth these birds find food in such winter conditions, where seeds and all other common food are deep buried under the snow. This lead the a very interesting aspect of psychology – spatial memory. Birds, under natural conditions that store food ahead of time are classified as food-storing birds, and migratory birds are typically non-food-storing birds. Food-storing birds are usually well-prepared before the winter and stores their food in various locations for later consumption.
Many food-storing birds, apparently to have a fluctuating memory system for long term spatial memory. They demonstrates an extraordinary improved memory in the winter, but not in summer where abundant amount of food can be found. Researches shown that the hippocompal and parahippocampal regions had suddenly “adapted” to the extreme environment, indicated a greater hippocampal complex activity and greater in size and weight. Astounding! Right off from my memory, I remembered a research shown that food-storing-birds are able to allocentrically located more than 70% of food cache site where us, human is only able to retrieve ~20%; this difference is relatively large considering human’s superior intelligence. Now what is more?
How does the mode-switching complex works neurologically in food-storing birds?
How the brain signals itself to switch-modes?
Does the natural of mode-switching restricted to the functional anatomy of just birds?
What are other aspects of cognition is improved in birds other than spatial navigation?
Comparative Cognition can be interesting too…
Oh right, the photo was taken on the last day of my exams, the 15th.
Memorti.
Edward Wong is a Year 3 Neuroscience student at University of Alberta, Canada.
