[NatureNS] Article: Zoologger: Unmasking the Zorro of the avian world

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Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:26:11 -0300
From: James Churchill <jameslchurchill@gmail.com>
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&gt; much more complete
--14dae934036b67530a04bbb85af7
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hi folks,

This was an interesting article and definitely generated a lot of good
discussion.
 Unfortunately, I agree: to me, the results of the study (presented in the
Behavioral Ecology article) did not demonstrate what the authors
claimed they did:

It does look like Shrikes with white masks hunted at a different angle to
the sun, and had lower hunting efficiency than unpainted and control
shrikes. However, this only demonstrates an effect of white paint around
the eyes on orientation angle during hunting and on hunting success. In
other words, this does not necessarily provide any information about
the *function
*of the black mask - it just suggests that having white (paint) around the
eyes might be less conducive to hunting vs having a black mask.

The authors state in the discussion " *we demonstrate that the facial mask
of the Masked Shrike serves the purpose of allowing the bird to face into
the sun, enabling it to identify prey by its larger shadow cast toward the
perched shrike, and enabling the shrike to approach the prey without
alerting it to the impending attack*"

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