Oilbird – Animal of the Week

Welcome to another episode of animal of the week this week’s. Animal is the oil bird, a brown but ornate bird. That gets its name from the fact that baby oil birds were boiled down to make torchon oil birds are endemic to northern South America and the Caribbean island of Trinidad.

They live in an incredible range of altitudes from coastal caves to mountainous rainforests, 3,000 feet above sea level. They require caves to roost in, but also need forests nearby to freed from oil birds are found in colonies in caves like bats.

The largest colony of oil birds is found in quaver de guitarra National Park in Venezuela, where it is thought around 10,000 to 18,000 individuals live the reason oil birds have to live close to such lush.

Rainforests is because their frugivores so need fruit filled forests to survive. The atonia select few families of fruit that contain very high concentrations of lipids and low water content, which is what allows these birds to be complete.

Frugivores as animals that eat more watery fruits. Don’t, get as much energy from them so either have to eat other foods as well or constantly forage for fruit. Oil Birds live around 15 to 20 years. They’re monogamous, meaning they mate for life with one partner once they have made it.

They lay two to four eggs over a six day period and will then incubate these eggs in their cliff or cave site. Roosts babies are born very fat. They weigh more than the adults, but they will lose a loss of this fat.

They are born with it because the fruity diets have little protein in them, so they grow very slowly and so rely on this fat reserve to survive. Oil boats have many characteristics similar to bats. They’re nocturnal, so deploy echolocation oil, birds and swiftlets are the only known birds to use echolocation.

An oil birds method of sonar is much cruder than that of other animals, such as dolphins as dolphins possess special organs in their heads called the melon, whereas oil birds simply rely on their hearing.

The click produced by oil birds are anywhere from 2 to 10 kilohertz. So a well within the human hearing range of 2 Hertz to 20 kilohertz, so bat detectors, aren’t needed to hear them. An oil birds eyesight is also well adapted to their low-light environments.

Their eyes contain mostly small rod, receptors that are responsible for letting in as much light as possible, but few cone cells, which are responsible for letting in color and dictating overall resolution.

This means an oil birds eyes have a very high capacity for light that the image has bad resolution, but this makes sense as these birds and nocturnal, so they make up to this lack of resolution using the echolocation oil birds have few predators as nothing can reach Them in their cave sight, ruse the iucn classes them as Least Concern.

However, their numbers are decreasing, but not at a rate to cause alarm. The decline is mainly down to deforestation, as they rely on lush, fruitful jungles to feed.