Too many mouths to feed? Just make your babies fight each other to the death! That's a strategy some bird parents have been using since even before TheHunger Games was popular. It means the strongest chicks get stronger while the weakest ones conveniently stop showing up to the table.
One type of bird takes this family drama a step further: after letting the biggest chicks bully their siblings for a while, parents suddenly decide the runts are their favorites and begin beating up the older chicks themselves. Authors looking for the next dystopian mega-hit, take note.
"Many species of birds show 'hatching asynchrony,'" says Daizaburo Shizuka of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This means they stagger the hatching of the eggs within a nest. When some chicks emerge from their eggs days later than others, the younger birds are doomed to be outweighed and outcompeted by their older siblings. Blue-footed ...
