Birds With Smaller Brains More Likely To Be Hunted

Bird hunting is one of the people's favorite past time. Enable to feel good about this hobby, one must shoot a bird. Now, researchers discovered that the smaller the bird's brains are, the more they are likely to be shot.

A pair of scientists found that birds with bigger brains are less likely to be shot by hunters, compared to birds with smaller brains. The research paper was published in the journal Biology Letters. The researchers are Andre Pape Møller from the Université Paris-Sud in France and Johannes Erritzøe with House of Bird Research, in Denmark. They illustrate the study that they have conducted, comparing the bird brain in hunted prey.

In the study, the research team gathered the statistics database used by taxidermists in Denmark. The data are from the years 1960 to 2015 it also includes 3781 birds among the 197 species, according to IFL Science.

The experts looked at the factors, including organ size, gender, body mass, species, and color. They have found the one factor that highlighted among the rest. The scientists have clearly discovered that birds with larger brains are thirty times less likely to be shot compared to birds that have a smaller brain, relative to the size of their bodies were more often to be shot, according to Phys.org.

As follows, the team suggested that hunting is very likely to have an evolutionary impact on animals, especially the ones that are being hunted by humans. The researchers indicate  that they do not believe that hunters are targeting a specific species which are smaller. Thus, birds with larger brains are more likely to learn how to be vigilant to humans.

The study authors propose may lead to a conclusion that as a matter of fact, birds that have a smaller brain lack intelligence to recognize humans that hold a gun. Smaller brain birds are more likely to stay longer compared to bigger brainy birds that fly away seeing humans with guns.