Among the little nutritious foods, pollution and lights and continuous noises of the city, doves have also managed to create a home. We have nicknamed them like Flying rats because They put their beak in our garbage, where they find a livelihood. However, our neighbors unwanted Not only do they find food in waste, but also objects that, without suspecting it, mutilate them.
You may have observed that many of the pigeons in your city are lacking fingers or, directly, entire legs. These deformities – which, without a doubt, does not help them gain more affections – They are not the result of a disease, or an infection, Although pigeons have an exaggerated fame of being a focus of both. This is stated by a scientific study that investigated the pigeons of the city of Paris.
The authors of the study, published in Biological conversationThey point out that they are discarded strings and even human hairs are after the mutilation of these urban birds. “The mutilation of the fingers of the pigeons was more frequent in the blocks of the cities With a greater degree of air pollution and noise pollutionand tends to increase with the density of hairdressers, “says the study.
To reach this conclusion, experts observed the number of mutilated pigeons and their extension in 46 different places in Paris: “The number of mutilations in wounded pigeons was greater The more populated a block of the city was, and tended to descend with the increase in the density of green areas. “The pigeons, say the authors of the study, are” highly sedentary “birds that remain in their areas without moving too much.
That is, the pigeons you see in your neighborhood are always the same and, in fact, they can give you a clue for how your neighborhood is. “Street pigeons are closely related to human activities to feed and nestThis makes them a candidate species to be a good local mirror about the environmental conditions of the city, “they say in the study.
Hairs like ropes
But how do these mutilations occur? The pigeons studied had remains of fine strings and human hairs around their stumps. Researchers detail, therefore, that these waste surround the legs of the pigeons and, once hooked, They are closing more and more on them until the blood flow is cut. From there, the member’s necrosis occurs and over time it ends up falling, leaving a stump.
“These mutilations have consequences in the physical state and in the survival of wounded pigeons, affecting their ability to find food, their ability to copulate, to access to reproduction spaces. In addition, While the necrosis lasts, pigeons are more vulnerable to diseases“, explains the scientific article. The pigeons find these hairs and ropes when you travel to Pata through the same streets as us.
The study also highlights that they are the busiest streets, the most populated blocks and spaces with outdoor food markets or with hairdressers where a greater amount of mutilated pigeons is located. These areas, meanwhile, were related to a high level of environmental and acoustic pollution. They also explained why these mutilations were probable were caused by infections.
To do this, the authors also dedicated themselves to observing the plumage of each of the pigeons they observed in the study. Dark feathers have doves are more resistant to infections And, therefore, if mutilations had to do with a bacterium, they should be especially frequent in clear fur pigeons. “We do not find variations in the conditions of the fingers according to the plumage,” they conclude.
But, in addition, they also took into account the antiquity of the plumage: they compared the pigeons that had just developed it with those who wore older feathers. That is, to the youngest with the oldest. In this sense, the researchers observed that Younger pigeons were protected from deformities. “This is because they have been exposed for less time to the causes that are potentially harmful,” they clarify.
(Tagstotranslate) Birds
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