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Life in the city produces for you worries: high leterol (sorry, I'm sorry, I'm in the process of removing it).
Crows are generally not difficult to feed and survive mainly from plants, carrion and food recovered from human sources, such as landfills and garbage cans. But the food we throw away may not be as healthy for these collectors as the food they would find in an environment devoid of people. Scientists have wondered whether the diet of crows suffers from urban life. So, of course, they fed the corvids with McDonald's cheeseburgers and then analyzed their blood.
Cholesterol is an important molecule for body function, but too much has been linked to the disease in humans. What too much cholesterol does to other animals, scientists are not sure. A team led by Assistant Professor Andrea K. Townsend of Hamilton College, New York, aims to measure the effects of urbanization and poor quality diet on crested cholesterol levels and overall survival.
The researchers banded and collected blood samples from 140 chicks of crows from Davis, California, and 86 chicks from Clinton's crows in New York, and monitored them for two or three years. For some of the raven families in New York, researchers supplemented their diet by placing a McDonald's cheeseburger within 10 meters of the nest, five to six days a week.
Urban environments (defined by researchers as environments with more impervious surfaces) appeared to be associated with higher cholesterol levels and decreased survival. And poultry from burger-fed birds seemed to have higher cholesterol levels, on average, than birds that did not receive burgers.
But it is unclear whether cholesterol per se was good or bad for birds, and burger-fed birds seemed to be in better shape than those who had not received McDonalds. It is also unclear what constitutes "high cholesterol" for a crow. However, it is clear that urbanization overall seems to have a negative effect on the survival of the crow during the first three years of life, according to the document published in The Condor: ornithological applications. The results appear to be consistent with other experiments on house sparrows, giant iguanas in the North Bahamas and kitten foxes in San Joaquin, where cholesterol levels in urban populations (or populations in more populated areas) ) are higher.
Such a study leaves many questions unanswered. The researchers only watched young crows for two or three years. What about the effects of a fast food diet on older crows? The researchers concluded that they would need to observe the crows longer to fully understand the possible side effects that high cholesterol might have.
All this shows that life in the city does not only change humans, it also changes the animals of our urban habitats.
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