Amanda Ridley
Oct. 22, 2003
Feeding Behavior in Arabian Babblers
To Feed or Not to Feed: The Effect of the Type of Food on Allofeeding Behavior in Arabian Babblers
Kinneret Kate Shulamit Ely, 14, Williamsburg, Va.
Semifinalist, Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challenge, 2003
Project background: Arabian babblers are a species of songbird that live in Israeli deserts. They live as cooperative breeders, which means that all the adult babblers in a breeding group, even nonparents, help raise the fledglings, or baby babblers, in that group. Allofeeding is when one adult babbler feeds another adult babbler. (When an adult babbler feeds a fledgling, that's called a feeding.) Kinneret did a project in order to see whether the type of food she fed to Arabian babblers would affect their allofeeding behavior.
Kinneret hypothesized that the type of food she fed to the babblers wouldn't affect their allofeeding behavior because she thought there are many social factors involved with allofeeding that could override the type of food. An important social factor is that a dominant babbler, or a high-ranking babbler, will always feed its subordinates.
 | An Arabian babbler in its desert setting. | Kinneret Ely |
Tactics and results: Kinneret conducted her research using two foods that the babblers were familiar with—white bread and mealworms—and two foods that were new to the babblers—lemon cake and melon. (The two new foods were approved by her science supervisors, a.k.a. her grandparents.)
Kinneret spent 3 weeks in the Hazeva desert in Israel, out in the field, conducting research on tamed babblers. She researched nine babbler groups, five of which had fledglings, four of which didn't. She would go to one babbler group and feed an individual babbler bread. She would see what it would do with the bread if it accepted it. When a babbler accepts a food, it can either eat it, not eat it, or allofeed it. When a babbler does that, it's called a feeding event. She would stop feeding that babbler once it stopped accepting food. (Babblers stop eating when they are full.) She would then repeat this procedure with the other babblers in that group and then move on to the other groups and repeat the procedure. Then she would repeat the entire procedure using mealworms, cake, and melon instead of bread. She recorded 425 feeding events on index cards using shorthand.
Kinneret found that the babblers accepted mealworms most often, bread less often, cake rarely, and melon almost never. She also found that, once a babbler accepts a mealworm or bread, then the likelihood that the babbler would allofeed either food was approximately the same. The babblers never allofed cake or melon, and she thinks that's because those foods were new to the babblers, and they weren't sure whether they would have detrimental effects on them or the fledglings. She also noticed that, in the groups that had fledglings, all feedings were from an adult babbler to a fledgling. There were fewer allofeedings in the babbler groups that didn't have fledglings, but she noticed that all allofeedings were from a dominant babbler to a subordinate.
Kinneret's hypothesis was largely correct because even though the babblers did accept mealworms most often, bread less often, and cake and melon rarely, the allofeeding rates of bread and mealworms were approximately the same. Also, all allofeedings were from a dominant babbler to a subordinate. Her project suggests that social factors have a high influence on Arabian babblers and may have an influence in animal behavior in general, including humans.
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