{"id":79829,"date":"2025-08-18T23:17:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T23:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/79829\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T23:17:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T23:17:07","slug":"streaked-shearwaters-prefer-to-excret-in-air-new-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/79829\/","title":{"rendered":"Streaked Shearwaters Prefer to Excret in Air, New Study Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ornithologists from the University of Tokyo<\/a> have observed excretions of streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas)<\/a> in the open ocean using belly-mounted video cameras. These seabirds exhibited a tendency to avoid excretion while floating on the sea surface and consistently excreted during flight; excretion timings showed periodicity, occurring every 4-10 minutes during daylight hours with inter-event intervals varying within a few minutes.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The streaked shearwater (Calonectris leucomelas), a species of seabird found in the Pacific Ocean. Image credit: Kanachoro.<\/p>\n

Understanding when and how often seabirds excrete at sea is important for understanding their potential influence on marine ecosystems.<\/p>\n

Whales are known to redistribute nutrients through excretion, the \u2018whale pump.\u2019<\/p>\n

Large and widespread populations of seabirds could similarly shape key pelagic ecosystem processes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was studying how seabirds run on sea surface to take off,\u201d said lead author Dr. Leo Uesaka, a researcher at the University of Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile watching the video, I was surprised that they dropped feces very frequently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was funny at first, but it turned out to be more interesting and important for marine ecology.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using eraser-sized, backward-facing cameras strapped to the bellies of 15 streaked shearwaters, Dr. Uesaka and his colleague, Dr. Katsufumi Sato, recorded and analyzed nearly 200 defecation events.<\/p>\n

They found that the birds almost always relieved themselves while flying and that defecation often followed shortly after takeoff.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, the birds took off solely for bathroom breaks and returned to the water within a minute.<\/p>\n

These findings suggest that they intentionally avoid pooping while floating.<\/p>\n

\u201cStreaked shearwaters have very long and narrow wings, good for gliding, not flapping,\u201d Dr. Uesaka said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have to flap their wings vigorously to take off, which exhausts them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis means the risk of excreting on the sea surface outweighs the effort to take off. There must be a strong reason behind that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The researchers suspect this habit may spare the birds from fouling their feathers with feces, help them avoid attracting predators, or simply help the birds poop more easily compared to a floating position.<\/p>\n

While in flight, the birds pooped about every 4 to 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

The authors estimated that the birds excrete 30 grams of poop every hour, which is about 5% of their body mass.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know why they keep this excretion rhythm, but there must be a reason,\u201d Dr. Uesaka said.<\/p>\n

To find out, the scientists plan to use cameras or temperature sensors with longer battery life, combined with GPS, to map where seabirds release their droppings at sea.<\/p>\n

They hope that these future studies will offer further insights into the role of seabird feces in marine ecology.<\/p>\n

\u201cFeces are important. But people don\u2019t really think about it,\u201d Dr. Uesaka said.<\/p>\n

The findings<\/a> appear today in the journal Current Biology.<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Leo Uesaka & Katsufumi Sato. Periodic excretion patterns of seabirds in flight. Current Biology 35 (16): R795-R796; doi: 10.1016\/j.cub.2025.06.058<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ornithologists from the University of Tokyo have observed excretions of streaked shearwaters (Calonectris leucomelas) in the open ocean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[8176,49,48302,48303,48,48304,20652,66,48305,48306,48307],"class_list":["post-79829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-bird","tag-ca","tag-calonectris","tag-calonectris-leucomelas","tag-canada","tag-feces","tag-flight","tag-science","tag-seabird","tag-shearwater","tag-streaked-shearwater"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79829"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79829\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}