Palatability birds

The palatability of the flesh of birds to humans is broadly correlated with their visibility, including plumage color and behavior. Cott (1947) noted in Egypt that hornets Vespa orientalis) fed on a carcass of a dove but ignored that of a kingfisher... 

How much a mammal eats of a given plant often depends on the levels of different classes of chemical constituent, notably nutrients and plant secondary metabolites. As in birds, it is not the plant defense compounds alone, but rather complex balances between nitrogen and carbohydrate contents, levels of defense compounds, and fiber that determine palatability. 

Birds do not necessarily distinguish palatable and unpalatable prey by odor. Free-ranging European birds such as chaffinch, house sparrow, robin, starling, blackbird, and song thrush recognized bread pieces treated with quinine and mustard powder only by their size, but not other visual cues or smell. This has a bearing on model-mimic relationships. Batesian mimics are often smaller than their unpalatable models (Marples, 1993). 

Marples, N. M. (1993). Do wild birds use size to distinguish palatable and unpalatable prey types Animal Behaviour46,347-354. 

Example 10. Tinamous, unlike ratites, have a keel on the sternum, but they do share with ratites the paleognathous palate and unique bill structure.24 This final example in Table III thus reflects the past uncertainty as to whether tinamous are phylogenetically allied with ratites or possibly with gallinaceous birds exemplified by the chicken. The immunological work firmly supports a tinamou-ratite grouping. 

In 1862, H.W. Bates presented an hypothesis explaining the similar color patterns in several species sets of tropical butterflies in different families. His hypothesis was one of the early applications of Qiarles Darwin s theory of natural selection. Bates reasoned that an edible butterfly species that was susceptible to predation would evolve, due to selection by a bird predator, to look like an unpalatable, or distasteful model species. If the mimic was rarer than the model, then birds would encounter the distasteful model more frequently, and would learn to avoid all butterflies that looked like the distasteful ones. In fact, the relative rarity of the model was to Bates a prerequisite for such a phenomenon to evolve. As mimicry theory has progressed, mathematical models show that relative abundances of models and mimics, as well as relative palatability of the two species, will determine the outcome. 

The felids, for instance, typically remain with the mother until subadults, when their hunting skills are established. In the selection of appropriate foodstuffs the carnivore is aided and directed by the chemical characteristics of the food. Vertebrates, invertebrates, and plants vary markedly in their chemical composition, which is important in diet selection. There exists wide variation in the taste of bird eggs and bird flesh as determined by human and animal palatability judgements (, ). 

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