Even A Tiny Oil Spill Spells Bad News For Birds

OILED UP Consuming even small amounts of crude oil could make birds sluggish. MINNEAPOLIS - Birds don’t must be drenched in crude oil to be harmed by spills and leaks. Ingesting even small quantities of oil can interfere with the animals’ regular conduct, researchers reported November 15 on the annual meeting of the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry North America. Birds can take in these smaller doses by preening slightly greasy feathers or consuming contaminated food, for example. Big oil spills, such as the 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, depart a path of lifeless and visibly oily birds (SN: 4/18/15, BloodVitals wearable p. 22). But incidents like final week’s 5,000-barrel spill from the Keystone pipeline - and BloodVitals device smaller spills that don’t make national headlines - may also impact wildlife, even if they don’t spur dramatic pictures. We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs each Thursday. To check how oil snacks would possibly affect birds, researchers fed zebra finches small amounts of crude oil or peanut oil for two weeks, then analyzed the birds’ blood and habits.



Birds fed the crude oil had been much less lively and spent much less time preening their feathers than birds fed peanut oil, stated examine coauthor Christopher Goodchild, an ecotoxicologist at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. Oil-soaked birds will typically preen excessively to try to remove the oil, sometimes on the expense of different essential activities similar to feeding. But in this case, the birds didn’t have any crude oil on their feathers, so the decrease in preening is probably an indication they’re not feeling well, the researchers say. Exactly how the oil impacts the birds’ exercise levels isn’t clear. Researchers suspected that oil may deprive birds of oxygen by affecting hemoglobin, which carries oxygen within the blood. Blood exams didn’t turn up any evidence of broken hemoglobin proteins but did discover some evidence that oil-sipping birds may be anemic, Goodchild stated. At the higher of two crude oil doses, birds’ blood contained less hemoglobin per crimson blood cell, a sign of anemia.



The findings, while preliminary, add to a rising pile of evidence that estimates of the variety of animals impacted by oil spills is perhaps too low. As an illustration, even a gentle sheen of oil on sandpipers’ wings makes it tougher to fly, costing birds extra energy, a distinct group of researchers reported earlier this 12 months. That could affect the whole lot from birds’ every day movements to long-distance migration. Questions or feedback on this text? C. Goodchild, A. Metz and S. DuRant. Are damaged erythrocytes linked to reduced activity and self-upkeep behaviors in birds uncovered to crude oil? I. Maggini et al. Light oiling of feathers will increase flight power expenditure in a migratory shorebird. Journal of Experimental Biology vol. 220, p. 2372. July 5, 2017. doi:10.1242/jeb.158220. We're at a important time and supporting science journalism is more vital than ever. Science News and our parent organization, the Society for Science, BloodVitals wearable want your assist to strengthen scientific literacy and make sure that essential societal decisions are made with science in mind.



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