MYTH OF THE BAD-NOSE BIRDS: Study of avian sense of smell recovers from Audubon's blunder

摘要

Blame Audubon. Animal behaviorist Timothy Roper says that the renowned naturalist prepagated die-hard misunderstandings of birds' sense of smell. In 1826, he published on the habits of the turkey vulture "with a View to Exploding the Opinion Generally Held of Its Extraordinary Power of Smelling." Observers as far back as Aristotle had claimed that various vultures sniff their way to prey. Yet Audubon argued that they couldn't smell. He described hiding smelly meat close to caged turkey vultures. They showed no sign of noticing. Many people today still think that, birds don't have working noses, and biologists often assume that the sense of smell doesn't matter much in avian lifestyles, says Roper. Yet decades of studies have shown that birds do have a sense of smell, sometimes as fine as some mammals'. Turkey vultures, for example, can pick up faint traces of certain odors. A classic report in the 1960s noted that California-gas-company repair crews found leaks in their lines by watching for circling turkey vultures attracted to the carrionlike scent added to the gas as a safety alert.