Fish from a stranger
What happens when your colony collapses, your numbers are too low and you can’t protect your chicks from predators? What if there’s still an excess of food but too few mouths to feed?
In those circumstances you get allofeeding, where other members of the colony feed chicks which aren’t their own. Non-breeding individuals and failed breeders join in to help protect and raise other birds’ chicks.
It does result in some very fussy and seriously overfed chicks. Here’s an Arctic Tern chick, one of only a handful of survivors, being fussy about which adult it takes fish from.
Would you take fish from a strange bird?
More Arctic Terns
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