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Warning Eggs About a Warming World
One species has a way of preparing young for warmer temperatures
© Golden Colt
For birds, learning starts early. Birds listen to their parents’ songs and calls from inside the egg. Recent findings have shown that calls from Zebra Finch parents can even prepare their chicks for warmer temperatures before they hatch. Researchers noticed that Zebra Finches make a special high-pitched call, called a heat call, when sitting on their eggs on hot days. Once out of the egg, chicks whose parents made heat calls grow more slowly in the heat. As adults, they seek out warmer spots for their nests, and even produce more offspring of their own than finches that didn’t slow their growth in hot conditions when they were chicks.
BirdNote®
Warning Eggs About a Warming World
Written by Conor Gearin
This is BirdNote.
[Zebra Finch calls]
For birds, learning starts early. Birds listen to their parents’ songs and calls from inside the egg. Recent findings have shown that calls from Zebra Finch parents can even prepare their chicks for warmer temperatures before they hatch.
Researchers noticed that Zebra Finches make a special high-pitched call, called a heat call, when sitting on their eggs and temperatures rise above 84 degrees.
[Zebra Finch heat call]
After chicks inside the egg have heard a parent making these heat calls, it has a profound effect on them, down to the cellular level. They metabolize energy differently, perhaps to reduce the amount of damage to their bodies caused by heat.
[Zebra Finch calls]
Once out of the egg, these chicks grow more slowly in the heat. As adults, they seek out warmer spots for their nests, and even produce more offspring of their own than finches that didn’t slow their growth in hot conditions when they were chicks.
Scientists are still figuring out how exactly this sound signal from the parents ends up changing their offspring’s development. But what’s encouraging is that at least for this species, parents have a way of getting their young ones ready to survive in a warming world.
[Zebra Finch calls]
For BirdNote, I’m Ariana Remmel.
Support for BirdNote is provided by Ellen Blackstone from Edmonds, Washington and generous listeners around the world.
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Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. ML169580301 Recorded by Eric R. Gulson C.
Heat call recording provided by Mylene M. Mariette.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2024 BirdNote August 2024
Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID# heatcall-01-2024-08-30 heatcall-01
References:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2021.1893
https://fcen.uncuyo.edu.ar/catedras/2016-mariette-buchanan.pdf
Ariana Remmel
Narrator
Conor Gearin
WriterSights & Sounds
