Cigarettes are bad for your health. But Show more Read the article below and answer the questions that follow: Cigarettes are bad for your health. But thats only if you smoke them. If you use them to line your nest they might actually do some good.
Scientists have recently found that birds that decorate their nests with discarded cigarette butts full of nicotine are less bothered by parasites.* When building a nest birds tend to make do with the materials at hand. Twigs and leaves are popular choices. Some fresh green leaves give off strong smells. So how can city birds manage? Apparently some reach for the fibres found in used cigarette filters. Scientists got to wondering whether this habit might provide the birds with benefits other than bedding. So they investigated the nests of finches and sparrows that were living on the campus of the National University of Mexico which is in the heart of Mexico City. The scientists used heat traps to lure the parasites and then counted them. Most of the nests contained cellulose fibres from broken cigarette filters. They found that nests with the most used cigarette filter fibres had the lowest number of parasites in this case blood sucking mites. For these birds a butt a day might keep the mites away! *[Biology Letters: M. Suarez-Rodriguez I. Lopez-Rull C. Macias Garcia Incorporation of cigarette butts into nests reduces nest ectoparasite load in urban birds: new ingredients for an old recipe.] Adapted from Scientific American 60-second podcast by Karen Hopkin 05/12/2012. (i) Name one bird from the study and name its parasite. (ii) Explain the term ectoparasite. (iii) Suggest one negative effect on birds or chicks of living in parasite-infested nests. Show less
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