Did you know that when chicks hatch they are entirely dependent on their Mother hen for body warmth? :cake:

 

That is because when they are born they are Cold Blooded! It takes them a week before they start oxidizing their own food and generating their own body heat.

 

Thanks to Betty Rhea who shared this fascinating insight thru the Rares magazine.

Once more showing a link to reptiles

Wow thanks for that never knew that!

Wow thanks for that never knew that!

 

Neither did I. It goes to show that when they're first hatched it is imperative to keep the breeding room temperature above 10C.

Very interesting - thanks for sharing renee

Just because they depend on their mother for heat doesn't mean they are cold-blooded (the proper term you are looking for is ectothermic which means they rely on their environment and are not actually cold blooded persay). Because baby budgies and other birds are so small when they hatch they have a huge surface area to volume ratio in which they lose a lot of heat. So they need their mum to keep them warm as well as preventing them from losing heat.

It would sort of be like us walking out in to the Antarctic in the middle of winter with no clothes on. We are losing more heat than we can generate.

 

I would think it would be more that, than they are cold-blooded at the start of life. To be convinced I would need to see an article on it. lol

 

Dave; mammals are descended from reptiles too (we just split off earlier).

Edited February 3, 200916 yr by Sailorwolf

The explanation SW gave seems more logical .

Just because they depend on their mother for heat doesn't mean they are cold-blooded (the proper term you are looking for is ectothermic which means they rely on their environment and are not actually cold blooded persay). Because baby budgies and other birds are so small when they hatch they have a huge surface area to volume ratio in which they lose a lot of heat. So they need their mum to keep them warm as well as preventing them from losing heat.

It would sort of be like us walking out in to the Antarctic in the middle of winter with no clothes on. We are losing more heat than we can generate.

 

I would think it would be more that, than they are cold-blooded at the start of life. To be convinced I would need to see an article on it. lol

 

Dave; mammals are descended from reptiles too (we just split off earlier).

 

I'm sure you have access to more articles than most of us and can find a definitive answer SW. But the reference to the oxdization of the blood after the first week of like seems to indicate cold bloodedness to me .....

if I have time I will do some googling too renee

I suppose I could look it up, but I've been busy working at clinics for the last week, week before that and the next 2 weeks lol. I enjoy it immensely, but I get so tired.

Dave; mammals are descended from reptiles too (we just split off earlier).

 

I do realise this SailorWolf. If you are a believer in pure evolutionary theory, we all descend from bacteria that were on earth that survive the period we term "Snowball earth", where there earth was completely covered by ice of approximately 3 million years. It $ these bacteria we descen from, as although other bacteria exited before snowball earth, a lot fo these were wiped out by the lack of sunlight and severe low temperatures.

However not everything follows the same path.

When you said that the "cold blooded-ness" shows their link to reptiles, it just seemed like you were saying they had evolved from reptiles and mammals had not.

 

Also there are other forms on life that aren't descended from bacteria like archae forms (I can't remember what they are called).

 

I get what you mean about a common ancestor though.

 

Fun fact: Our mitochondria (the energy houses for our cells) actually have their own DNA, separate to our nuclear DNA. This is because mitochondria are actually primitive forms of bacteria that invaded the cell and formed a symbiotic relationship with it early on in the development of the cell on primitive Earth. So basically every cell in your body has a primitive bacteria in it.

However not everything follows the same path.

When you said that the "cold blooded-ness" shows their link to reptiles, it just seemed like you were saying they had evolved from reptiles and mammals had not.

 

No Sailorwolf. I can get in enough trouble on here for what I say on my own. Unfortunately that is the way you interpreted what I said. A simple mistake easily made. Not what I meant at all, just your interpretation.

Haha, well, if that's the case then it doesn't matter. lol.

 

I wasn't taking away your self-making trouble abilities! I was giving more trouble!!

I've just seen a documentary on SBS about Living Dinosaurs. Interestingly the doco ended with the narrator stating that his favourite "living dinosaur" was the PARROT.

 

Food for thought.

Mmm yes. Birds are living dinosaurs. However it is generally considered that ancient dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Some were possibly lukewarm blooded, (however, I have only seen the lukewarm idea from one source [the documentary "Evolve" on Nat Geo] the lukewarm ones would most likely have been the large ones because that is how they got so big, the smaller ones [which birds evolved from] were more likely warm-blooded).

 

Many ancient dinosaurs also sported feathers, such as the Dromeosaurs and even the Tyrannosaurs

Edited February 9, 200916 yr by Sailorwolf

doing a google you can find nothing definete about anything most of everything seems to be a "theory"

 

Example:

 

Now saying that birds didn't come from dinosaurs http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf093/sf093b08.htm

Now here is an article saying yes http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/diapsids/avians.html

 

then there are even more articles http://www.dino-web.com/birds.html

 

I did not find any articles that support that baby birds are cold blooded when they hatch though to support the original topic of this thread.

 

I did find information that they are endothermic http://www.cincinnatizoo.org/pdfs/Classifi...ensions_1-3.pdf which means they are warm-blooded when they are hatched.

 

Renee, if you can post the article that Betty wrote up for Rares magazine that would be wonderful, I did a google search for her name and the magazine and it only brought me back to this post .

Renee, if you can post the article that Betty wrote up for Rares magazine that would be wonderful, I did a google search for her name and the magazine and it only brought me back to this post .

 

The article is Baby Budgerigars Milestones by Betty Rhea, first published in 2004 and republished in February 2009 Aviary Chatter magazine.

 

After listing the milestones from Day 1 -35, the author writes:

 

"During the first days after hatching the newborns are nestled all the time. The mother completely covers them. As consecutive chicks hatch they huddle close together with the youngest at the bottom. They rest their necks on each other and stay in this huddle even when the mother leaves the nest. The reason for this is their intense need for body contact – staying in this huddle provides this contact, maximises warmth and happens to be a very good resting position.

 

That for the first week of its life a newly hatched chick is entirely dependant on its mother and siblings for body heat. It is only when it reaches a week old that it becomes 'warm blooded' and from then on maintains its body heat for itself by oxidizing its food."

 

Edited February 10, 200916 yr by renee

We already have Baby Budgie Milestones on BBC from permission of Betty Rae

 

 

 

http://forums.budgiebreeders.asn.au/index....showtopic=22617

Edited February 10, 200916 yr by KAZ

Renee, if you can post the article that Betty wrote up for Rares magazine that would be wonderful, I did a google search for her name and the magazine and it only brought me back to this post .

 

The article is Baby Budgerigars Milestones by Betty Rhea, first published in 2004 and republished in February 2009 Aviary Chatter magazine.

 

After listing the milestones from Day 1 -35, the author writes:

 

"During the first days after hatching the newborns are nestled all the time. The mother completely covers them. As consecutive chicks hatch they huddle close together with the youngest at the bottom. They rest their necks on each other and stay in this huddle even when the mother leaves the nest. The reason for this is their intense need for body contact – staying in this huddle provides this contact, maximises warmth and happens to be a very good resting position.

 

That for the first week of its life a newly hatched chick is entirely dependant on its mother and siblings for body heat. It is only when it reaches a week old that it becomes 'warm blooded' and from then on maintains its body heat for itself by oxidizing its food."

 

 

I think this statement is being misunderstood because they are born warm blooded but it isn't until a week old that they can maintain their own body heat. She does have warm blooded in quotes like and she never said the chick was hatched cold blooded. I read this statement else where too in the articles.

We've had discussions before about theories. Theories are the highest form of knowledge in science and facts are the lowest. A theory is a hypothesis that is highly resistance to falsification. Meaning that all theories that exist today have not been proven wrong.

The theory of gravity is a theory and yet have you ever seen the theory of gravity proven wrong?

There is also the theory of relativityand the theory of plate tectonics.

 

So just remember that because something is a theory does not make it any less verifiable, in fact it is something that has not been proven wrong.

Once a theory is proven wrong it is not accepted any more.

The order of importance in science is Theory at the top followed by Laws, then Hypotheses and then Facts at the bottom.

 

I noticed after writing this Elly that you have quotation marks around "theory" in your post and you probably meant to use it in its everyday colloquial term, but I'd thought I would just outline it for new readers.

Edited February 10, 200916 yr by Sailorwolf

We've had discussions before about theories. Theories are the highest form of knowledge in science and facts are the lowest. A theory is a hypothesis that is highly resistance to falsification. Meaning that all theories that exist today have not been proven wrong.

The theory of gravity is a theory and yet have you ever seen the theory of gravity proven wrong?

There is also the theory of relativityand the theory of plate tectonics.

 

So just remember that because something is a theory does not make it any less verifiable, in fact it is something that has not been proven wrong.

Once a theory is proven wrong it is not accepted any more.

The order of importance in science is Theory at the top followed by Laws, then Hypotheses and then Facts at the bottom.

 

I noticed after writing this Elly that you have quotation marks around "theory" in your post and you probably meant to use it in its everyday colloquial term, but I'd thought I would just outline it for new readers.

 

your right SW I didn't mean it as actual theory but quote unquote theory , but that is good information.