{"id":89995,"date":"2025-08-23T00:46:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T00:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/89995\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T00:46:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T00:46:13","slug":"japan-seabirds-only-poop-when-they-fly-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/89995\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan seabirds only poop when they fly, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Certain Japanese seabirds only poop when they fly<\/a>, an unusual habit that researchers say is important for marine ecology.<\/p>\n

Streaked shearwaters<\/a>, also known by the Latin name Calonectris leucomelas, live on Japan\u2019s desert islands, and tend to defecate while flying every four to 10 minutes. A study<\/a> published this week in the journal Current Biology says this may help them stay clean and fertilize the ocean.<\/p>\n

The study also found that every hour the birds excrete an estimated 30 grams of feces, which is about five per cent of their body mass. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know why they keep this excretion rhythm, but there must be a reason,\u201d said Leo Uesaka, the study\u2019s lead author from the University of Tokyo, in a press release<\/a> on Aug. 18. <\/p>\n

Researchers say seabird droppings are rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, which fertilize the soil and nearby coastal waters. While they have studied how these nutrients affect ecosystems on land, less is known about the droppings\u2019 impact on the ocean, where seabirds spend most of their lives, the release reads.<\/p>\n

The population of shearwaters and their kins is estimated to be 424 million, so they have the potential to supply plenty of nutrients to plankton and other marine life. <\/p>\n

\"\"Streaked shearwater bird pooping A screenshot taken from researchers’ 2023 video shows a Streaked shearwater defecating. (Leo Uesaka via Current Biology) \u2018Those birds are serving a vital function\u2019 <\/p>\n

Dan Riskin, CTV News\u2019 science and technology specialist, notes that the new discovery adds to long-held knowledge about the ecosystem.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s really neat about this is that seabirds are famous for pooping all over islands, and people have harvested bird guano for centuries as a source of nitrogen for fertilizer and for gunpowder,\u201d he said in a Zoom interview with CTVNews.ca on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what this shows is that these birds are also pooping out over the open water, which means there are tonnes of nutrients going into those marine ecosystems as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those nutrients, he said, can be vital, especially in clear, tropical waters where they tend to be scarce. <\/p>\n

\u201cNitrogen and phosphorus are what keep ecosystems going. I mean, everything depends on those basic building blocks for energy,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go snorkeling off Vancouver Island, it\u2019s murky because there\u2019s tonnes growing … But if you\u2019re in the tropics in Hawaii, you can see for miles underwater because there\u2019s hardly anything growing in the water, because there\u2019s no nutrients.\u201d<\/p>\n

This strange tendency of species like the shearwaters, he says, could be making a big difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor birds to be pooping five per cent of their body weight every hour all over the place is pumping nutrients into those starved ecosystems. They really need it, and those birds are serving a vital function.\u201d <\/p>\n

Accidental discovery<\/p>\n

For the study, Uesaka said researchers placed eraser-sized, backward-facing cameras onto the bellies of 15 streaked shearwaters. <\/p>\n

Uesaka said they discovered the odd habit by accident, as researchers initially meant to study how seabirds run on sea surface to take off and fly. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile watching the video, I was surprised that they dropped feces very frequently,\u201d Uesaka said in the press release. \u201dI thought it was funny at first, but it turned out to be more interesting and important for marine ecology.\u201d <\/p>\n

The team ended up recording and analyzing almost 200 incidents of the birds pooping, which often happened shortly after takeoff. <\/p>\n

The birds occasionally took off just to defecate, flying no longer than a minute, according to Uesaka. On top of this observation, streaked shearwaters have to vigorously flap their long, narrow wings to take off, leading researchers to infer that the birds have a \u201cstrong reason\u201d to intentionally avoid bathroom breaks while on the water.<\/p>\n

Researchers think the birds may have this habit to avoid soiling their feathers, help them dodge predators, or just help them defecate more easily than when they\u2019re floating.<\/p>\n

Uesaka hopes to continue studying the role of seabirds\u2019 feces in marine ecology. \u201cFeces are important,\u201d Uesaka said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Certain Japanese seabirds only poop when they fly, an unusual habit that researchers say is important for marine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[712,49,48,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-89995","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89995","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=89995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}