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this was a very interesting article. thank you Liz for looking it up for us!Liz01 wrote: ↑May 14th, 2019, 12:53 pm Interesting to read.
Sibling Rivalry - the Great Survivial Technique
http://archive.hancockwildlife.org/stat ... lTechnique
i have underlined the sentence in the end of the quote. i hope it will helps to relieve the stress that we are bound to experience while we watch these nest cameras at the nests of birds of prey.Sibling Rivalry - the Great Survivial Technique
When owls, falcons, hawks or eagles lay their eggs in late winter or early spring they cannot be sure what the food supply will be to support the young some one to four months later as the chick's food demands become greatest. For millions of years nature has been experimenting with how best to resolve this issue.
The challenge for a species is quite simple. Nature wants to produce the most young that the habitat will effectively support. The system our raptors have evolved is quite ingenious. The balance is between developing a system in which the parents rear successfully what the habitat will produce food for versus a system in which all the chicks, if they did not get enough food, get collectively weaker and all starve. Sibling rivalry is where the bully takes all or most of the food until that bully is full, and only then does it sit back and let the next chick get fed. This then happens to the third chick. This means if lots of food is available then all three chicks will get fed and survive -- but not always will all chicks survive. This is nature's successful plan but not a plan that is easy to observe.
These species have worked out a fine scheme to insure that the most chicks survive under different levels of food productivity that might prevail at the different seasons. Now this system may seem harsh to us who get emotionally charged but it is a system that has worked well for the species over many millennia.