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Thread: birds' plates of meat

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    Default birds' plates of meat

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    Plates of meat, feet. Cockney Rhyming Slang. Google it!

    Birds' feet take many forms and each has a descriptor depending on how many toes point forwards versus backwards, whether toes are fused or not etc etc. One of the most interesting is that of the woodpeckers. No surprise that they have peculiar feet as they spend most of their time suspended on the side of tree trucks. Rather than the "normal" arrangement of three toes forward and one backwards, most woodpeckers have two forward and two backward. The term for this is "zygodactyly" and their feet are called "zygodactylous"- zygo = paired from greek for yoke, and dactyl = finger or toe.

    This image shows the foot of a female Downy Woodpecker. I've arbitrarily numbered the toes 1 through 4. As mentioned, a typical arrangement in birds is to have toes 1-3 pointing forward and 4 pointing back. This is the typical situation for example in the perching birds or "passerines". In the case of the Downy Woodpecker, toe-3 is turned back and points in the same general direction as toe-4.

    One aspect of woodpeckers' feet I had not noticed until now is how the outer toes are so much bigger and more developed than the inner ones. Notice how big toes 2 and 3 are compared to 1 and 4. I would imagine a biologist has done a mechanical study of this to find out why woodpeckers' feet are the way they are. On first principles I would design them differently but who's to argue with evolution?!

    And then there are 3-toed woodpeckers!
    Last edited by John Chardine; 05-13-2009 at 01:20 PM.

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    BPN Member Paul Lagasi's Avatar
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    Never notice that before...will pay more attention next time...keep them coming ....John

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    Interesting! I just did a powerpoint presentation to our local Naturalists group on a trip to Belize I did last year, and while looking up info. on Trogons, discovered that they are unique in that digits 3 and 4 point forward and digits 1 and 2 point back. No other bird family shares that trait. Unfortunately none of the images I have of Trogons are at the right angle to show this. Wikepedia has a lot of info on birds' feet under "dactyly".

    Richard

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