Bird supersense may date back to the dinosaur era

摘要

AN ORGAN that allows some birds to detect the movement of hidden prey by plunging their beaks into the ground seems to have been present in early birds 70 million years ago, and probably first appeared in their dinosaur ancestors. Special "remote touch" sensory receptors known as Herbst corpuscles, found in densely packed pits in the beak's tip, help birds detect the movement of worms in soil or small fish in water. This effectively gives birds a "sixth sense", according to Carla du Toit at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and her colleagues.