Animals are simultaneously humorous, caring, and intelligent, and I sometimes think they can outwit or even outperform us humans. The two animals a Florida woman found in her backyard are proof that animals can be incredibly loving and compassionate. The backyard of Laurie Wolf’s home in Jupiter, Florida is now home to an owl and a duckling. She snapped a picture of them and sent it to the National Geographic as a hobbyist wildlife artist and amateur photographer.
“They were just sitting there next to each other. It is not plausible. Even now, I find it hard to believe. The Eastern screech owl that had established a residence within a home box she keeps on her patio caught her attention first. Wolf claims that approximately a month later, she observed a cushioned object in the crate with the owl and assumed that it was an owl chick settling in with its mother. The duckling would be raised by the Eastern screech owl as its own. This tiny duck was a wood duck, which have been known to coexist peacefully with shrieking owls. “They were merely occupying the same space adjacent to one another. It lacks credibility. Right now, I find it to be unpersuasive.
Laurie was concerned about the owl’s motives though and thought it would try to eat the duckling. She asked a local bird specialist if these worries were justified, and they responded that there was a chance. The wildlife refuge agreed to take the duckling when she asked them to do so. It hopped out of the cage and ran to a pond, though, so Laurie and her husband went to the backyard to catch it. They didn’t see it again after that. Laurel claims:
“I don’t think I’ll ever have an experience like that again in my life.” We want to look at it positively and assume that the owl was delighted to accept the pair’s unexpected delivery, even though we are unsure of their motivations. Wood duck birds engage in “brood parasitism,” according to Bird Studies Canada’s Manitoba director Christian Artuso.
“Given that wood ducks don’t want to lay all of their eggs in one area, the situation appears to be very common. They frequently place them in the nests of other birds in the hopes that some would hatch and pass on the genes to the next generation. It’s not frequently reported, but it definitely happens, according to Artuso. He remembered a situation from 2007 in which an owl incubated and produced three wood ducklings. “You might compare it to not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Your odds of passing on your genes are marginally boosted if you spread your eggs widely, particularly if you lose your own eggs to a predator.
It’s impossible to know what a wild owl is thinking, according to Artuso, but it might be a case of what experts refer to as supernormal stimuli. He contends that rather than pondering its origin, female owls respond with the impulse of their mother to care for the egg. “Oh my god! The parents may be thinking. We’re going to have the best baby in the world, this egg is big!” He went on: “We are aware that this occurs, but we are genuinely clueless as to when it will happen again.
So I was glad to see another case of this.”Artuso thinks the Florida duckling may have survived:”Wood duck chicks are precocial, which means they are pretty independent of the get-go. There are also many documented cases of chicks from one brood joining up with those from another brood.” Via healthy food house
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