Birds eat all kinds of food, some of which appeal very much to our own palettes, especially things like berries, fruits, nuts, corn, and maybe even fish, crustaceans, molluscs and crustaceans. However, aside from sushi lovers, most of us prefer these types of food later in an at least partially cooked format. Then there are those birds that almost everyone can find things to be downright repulsive eat.
It is doubtful that you are even a few people on the raw meat of any kind or saliva have an appetite for insects or know slimy invertebrate, let alone carrion. Sure there are many people in this word that road kill and eat other things planted firmly in the category of strange, but in general we can chalk this up to cultural differences or isolated oddities in the world.
One thing that a few birds known to eat that we humans simply do not consume, at least not for food, is wax. Natural wax in the general sense and refers to a class of organic compound which is insoluble in water, and fixed in cold-resistant, but fragile mouldable at ambient temperatures and that melt into a liquid with low viscosity at elevated temperatures. Wax consists of long-chain fatty acids and is very difficult to digest for most organisms. Apart from its limited presence in things like chewing gum or wrapping some kinds of cheese, wax is not just something we eat, but something that we have found all kinds of creative practical applications. Birds can always be counted on to defy the basic logic or make exceptions to general rules, and the food wax is no exception.
There are actually several groups of birds that eat intentionally and are able to metabolize the wax. Many seabirds, such as petrels and auklets indirectly derive energy from the wax in the crustaceans, found that eating them. Then there are a handful of terrestrial birds, such as certain types of warblers and swallow that gorge themselves on waxy berries. The digestive tract of these odd birds are characterized by higher concentrations of acquired gallbladder secretion, increased concentrations of bile salt in the intestines, and a relatively slow passage of lipids from food. There is also some evidence that these birds return somehow a way Ruminators are like cows, so that partially digested wax compounds with the stomach from the small intestine for a second or third round of digestion.
Amazing how all that none of these birds will eat straight up wax, they're just kind of forced to consume it, because it is an inevitable part of the actual foods they prefer. Enter the honey guide (Indicatoridae), a family of 17 species only in Africa, and classified in the same order as woodpeckers (Piciformes). Rather unspectacular in appearance and basically about Songbird size, these birds are mostly insects, but they are famous for their curious behavior of eating the pure wax of the honeycomb. In addition, these strange birds solicit the help of honey-loving animals like honey badgers and even people by going to the location of a beehive as her assistant opens its attention to the hive to take the honey and leave the waxy comb and larvae of the honey guide....
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