For two months this spring, a pair of California condor mother and father rigorously tended to a single, monumental egg. They took turns sitting on the egg to maintain it heat, they usually routinely rotated the egg, a habits believed to advertise correct chick improvement.
What the birds, a part of a breeding inhabitants on the Oregon Zoo, didn’t seem to note was that the egg was a high-tech fraud. The plastic shell, made with a 3-D printer, was full of sensors designed to surreptitiously monitor circumstances contained in the condors’ nest.
For weeks, the dummy egg tracked the nest temperature, logged the birds’ egg-turning behaviors and recorded the ambient sound. The zoo hopes this knowledge will permit it to raised replicate pure circumstances within the synthetic incubators which might be key to its condor breeding efforts.
California condors, which might have wingspans of practically 10 toes, are critically endangered. So yearly, when the birds lay their eggs, the zoo whisks them out of the nest and into the security of the incubators. This technique has a number of benefits, prompting some pairs to put a second egg, enabling the zoo to observe embryo improvement and defending the delicate embryos from condor rowdiness.
“During breeding season, tensions tend to run high,” stated Kelli Walker, the zoo’s senior condor keeper. “And occasionally pairs will get into a fight in the nest room and by accident injure the egg.” (The chicks are returned to the nest once they start hatching.)
The extra intently the zoo can replicate pure circumstances within the incubators, the extra profitable will probably be. So Ms. Walker enlisted Scott Shaffer, an animal ecologist and fowl researcher at San Jose State University, and Constance Woodman, a fowl scientist and knowledgeable on conservation know-how at Texas A&M University, who collectively have made data-logging good eggs for a lot of totally different fowl species.
Here’s how they introduced the condor eggs into being:
Design the eggs
Dr. Woodman created a digital mannequin of the imitation condor egg. The shell needed to be skinny sufficient for the inner sensors to detect temperature adjustments however strong sufficient to face up to potential avian abuse. (A macaw as soon as threw one in all Dr. Woodman’s eggs out of its nest, two tales off the bottom.) To make sure the egg wouldn’t pop open, she designed threaded shell halves that may screw collectively tightly. “It will stay closed unless you’ve got thumbs,” she stated. “Birds do not have thumbs, so we’re in good shape.”
Print the shells
Dr. Woodman used a 3-D printer loaded with a plastic chosen particularly to be protected for birds, which could spend months sitting on the eggs. “I really, really don’t want to mean well and poison a bird,” she stated. Printing every shell took 13 hours.
To be certain that the egg was not liable to spinning or wobbling, Dr. Woodman gave it to Loretta, her litter-box-trained “house turkey,” she stated. “If Loretta doesn’t like it, she won’t sit on it.”
Dye the eggs
The colour of fowl eggs varies by species, and Dr. Woodman and Dr. Shaffer all the time attempt to replicate it as intently as potential. To match the refined, blue-green tint of condor eggs, Dr. Woodman dipped the shells right into a pot of a unhazardous dye supposed for youngsters’s clothes.
Add the electronics
Small knowledge loggers tucked contained in the shells can monitor the temperature and motion of the eggs. An audio recorder captures the sounds within the nest, which the zoo will play again to the eggs within the incubator. “Developing embryos can hear things through their shells,” Ms. Walker stated. And she used electrical tape to cowl the lights on the electronics, “otherwise it would have looked like a flashing Christmas egg.”
Weigh them down
Some birds will reject eggs which might be abnormally mild. So Ms. Walker used a scorching glue gun to connect rocks to the within of the egg, bringing its weight to greater than half a pound.
Make the swap
The first condor mother and father to obtain a sensible egg this yr have been a feminine recognized solely as quantity 762 and her mate, Alishaw. “He’s not what you would call a traditionally fantastic dad,” Ms. Walker stated. “He’ll incubate as long as he has to, but he’s not thrilled about it.” (762’s devotion to him, nevertheless, stays undimmed. “She’s kind of a ride-or-die with Alishaw,” Ms. Walker stated.)
When each birds left the nest, zoo workers moved their actual egg to an incubator and changed it with the faux one. The condors didn’t appear to note. (Their chick, which has since hatched, is again with its mother and father and doing effectively, Ms. Walker stated.)
Analyze the info
When the breeding season is over, Dr. Shaffer and Ms. Walker will analyze the info. The findings will inform future incubator settings and, the group hopes, assist carry extra California condor chicks safely into the world. “It’s just a really cool use of technology that will only get better,” Dr. Shaffer stated.
Source: www.nytimes.com