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For at least two weeks straight, UK tree surgeon John Hancock had a robin as his lunch companion. The species has been known to accept hand-feeding before, but this was different as the bird actually comes into Hancock’s truck to feed.
“We used to throw the odd crumb towards him, but none of us expected him to join us in the truck every day. He will take anything out of your hands and seems to enjoy human company.”
Now the robin descends from nearby trees every day and lands on John’s wing mirror ready for the snacks they bring especially for him.
Mr. Hancock and friends made a YouTube video of “Robbie” and created a Facebook fan page.
How did whales manage to grow so big? And is there a limit to how big they can get? Scientists looked at the mechanics of how whales feed, especially those species that consume tiny krill. They call what they discovered “lunge-feeding”, which is detailed in an article at Discover Magazine.
In order to make lunge-feeding work, you have to have a really big mouth to capture enough water in one gulp. But in order to have a big mouth, you need a big body. And in order to keep that big body running, you need to get a lot of food. And in the very act of getting that food–diving deep, lunging open-mouthed, and then pushing a school-bus-sized volume of water forwards–requires a lot of energy on its own.
This type of feeding might explain the size of whales.
If the scientists are right, they may have discovered one of the big ironies in evolution. Lunge-feeding may have allowed whales to become the biggest animals ever to roam the planet. But this was not an open-ended invitation.r. Once whales got large enough, lunge feeding itself became so costly it prevented them from getting any bigger.
