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Cigarettes are bad for your health. But that’s only if you smoke ‘em. If you use them to line your nest, they might actually do you some good. Because birds that decorate their digs with discarded cigarette butts are less bothered by parasites. That’s according to a study in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. [Monserrat Suárez-Rodríguez, Isabel López-Rull and Constantino Macías Garcia, Incorporation of cigarette butts into nests reduces nest ectoparasite load in urban birds: new ingredients for an old recipe?]
When building a nest, birds tend to make do with the materials at hand—or at beak. Twigs and leaves are popular choices. But what about city birds? Some reach for cigarettes, or at least the fluffy white fibers found in their filters.
Scientists got to wondering whether this habit might provide the birds benefits other than comfy bedding. So they grabbed the nests of finches and sparrows that were living on the campus of the National University of Mexico. That’s in the heart of Mexico City. And they found that the nests that were festooned with the most filter fiber had the lowest numbers of mites.
Could be that the little bloodsuckers are turned off by nicotine. Or maybe they’ve heard about the dangers of secondhand smoke. But for the birds, a butt a day might just keep mites away.
—Karen Hopkin
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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6 Comments
Add CommentIts a known fact that nicotine use lessens the incidents of viral and bacterial infection in humans yet nicotine has been demonized by the media, medical professions and pharmaceutical companies. Its interesting to note that the pharmaceutical industry alone has spent billions lobbying to get tobacco products regulated by the FDA, which they clandestinely control, versus the AFT. Ask yourself why? The answer is simple; nicotine has numerous health benefits, including the treatment of cancer, which they wish to control. Nicotine does not cause cancer. Nicotine is one of the very few substances which specifically identifies abnormal cells and opens pathways into those specific cells. When used in conjunction with other substances, nicotine could become a necessary element in the treatment of all forms of cancer. This fact means that nicotine could mean really big money for the pharmaceutical industry either through its suppression or through its use in treatments.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe result should have been expected. Nicotine is after all an insecticide, produced by plants to protect themselves. It is also sold by agricultural supply retailers for this same purpose. Anecdotally, I have known several animals who would steal cigarettes and eat the tobacco leaf from them when they needed to be wormed. Including a cat that would steal and stash them for future use and a mustang who would literally mug anyone who smelled of tobacco.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm reminded of the captioned photo in "Life" or "National Geographic" or some other magazine many decades ago, showing a centenarian native woman puffing away. When asked how she managed to live so long she replied, 'smoking - it kills the bugs!'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWatch the pharmaceutical industry attempt to patent nicotine in the very near future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"yet nicotine has been demonized by the media", smoking has been demonized because of all the people it has killed. Nicotine is the compound that causes addiction. Conspiracy theories are the refuge of those without facts or rational thought.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this*As well as having anti-parasite effects, Suárez-Rodríguez (the leader author of the paper) cautions there may be as-yet unknown negative effects for the birds, because many compounds in cigarette butts are known carcinogens, and some are pesticides.*
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the last paragraph of an article in nature.com at page:
http://www.nature.com/news/city-birds-use-cigarette-butts-to-smoke-out-parasites-1.11952