A battle-scarred grandfather, wanted to send this request to his grandchildren – “leave my old bones alone!” He was tired of wearing protective gears, even while asleep. The children habitually ganged up to invent novel tricks to tie him in knots. They thought his experience will automatically get expressed as innovative thinking and face whatever tricks they could come up with. The parents safely stood aside to let the issues get sorted out among themselves. They were wary of the creaking bones and his weighted average shrapnel like comments.
Alas! The metabolism and mechanism in his body have not been designed for the onslaught of the second generation (children, grandchildren). Like El Nino and La Nina, he came under the influence of Nil Nino or Ill Nina. Though figuratively different, his nil and ill brought the same environmental effect- extreme discomfort!
At 70+, managing a ragtag army
of grandchildren, once considered a gift, tested his energy reserves and frayed
nerves. Like everyone, ‘youngsters thought that all those around them are
also young, while the elders thought that all those youngsters are old enough
to take care of themselves’. These youngsters are fast and furious. Their
conversations echo like a rapid-fire questioning round.
The creaky bones, in the old body
wondered from where they got this style of speaking! As they were growing up, he
had seen them watching only innocuous cartoons. Little did he know that they
have quietly graduated to some serious stuff like the minions, paw patrol, Masha
and the Bear, kung fu pandas and the fire breathing dragons spewing out crispy dialogues.
He had lot of catching up to do!
His personal experience was ‘nothing worked in his favour without a resultant reaction, if it happened by chance’. While discussing about various languages, he had inadvertently asked them the tongue spoken in the God’s own country. They replied with a mischievous smile, "geographically speaking, it must be Malayalam!". Nodding in appreciation, he made the mistake of pointing out that it has the distinction of being a palindrome. Explanations that followed settled the issue for them. Suddenly, they asked. "Whether palindrome exists in numbers?"
To buttress their point, they showed him a series of numbers - 6116, 3773, 393 and so on. Caught in the web of his own over enthusiasm, he had to hurriedly make an exit, to dive into the realm of numbers. For once, luck partially favoured him - they did not zero in on and asked about palindrome in imaginary numbers. During his student days, he had difficulty to understand the real numbers themselves, and imaginary numbers did not fit in his scheme of mathematics. Frantic calls went to …Google help me! His call for help was answered, in the affirmative, by Wikipedia.
What they intended to do was to showcase their curriculum bound general knowledge and willingness to think beyond those classrooms. Is it not too much for the creaking bones - to struggle and remember or revisit and learn anew? Since he only had himself to blame, he kept quiet.
Sensing that the grandfather had somehow wiggled out of the number game, they sprung another trap. “The mother cat moves her assets - the newborn kittens, from place to place to safeguard them. Now, tell us whether “the birds also change the nestlings from one place to another? If not, why?"
Weary bones are not; he had to scramble and scratch his brain to formulate a logical answer. Feeding them with an off the cuff explanations will be a boomerang, sure to come back with more tough questions!
Wondering where from they have acquired “assets”, he tested the water with trepidation and said, “The cat has a wide mouth to pick up and redeposit its assets, in another nook or corner. Why does it do it? To prevent predators accessing its assets! Moreover, a cat does not fancy itself as a builder. Instead, it makes use of the flexible mouth, teeth and the thick, fleshy "scruff" on the kittens to ensure safe transportation.
Birds on the other hand, being arboreal, out of necessity build nests and really do a good job while at it! Coming to your question, since birds have rigid, sharp beaks, meant to be used as tools for feeding, preening and nest building, find it unsuitable for handling living creatures. Nestlings are incredibly delicate with hollow bones, often featherless and have no scruff to hold onto. This is the technical difficulty. Moreover, the birds cannot open their mouths wide enough to accommodate the size of the nestlings, which grow very fast and often weigh about half as much as the parents, within two weeks.
Hence, the bird parents cannot safely carry the weight of their babies. The parents are driven by instincts and generally do not move their fragile hatchlings. Instead of hurting the nestlings, they keep and guard over them in the same nest!” The grand old man silently thanked his stars for having studied about the red vented bulbul and its nesting habits.
As expected, the boomerang came swishing through the air. “Why, the birds are not able to or engineered to open their mouths wide? After all what is required, other than a collection of elastic muscles and hinges at the junction of the neck and head!”
Really a tough question on evolutionary biology and unfortunately for him t his uncomfortable situation of today had evolved about six decades ago, when he had opted out of studying biology, leave alone the evolutionary biology! As a grandfather, he felt proud when these kids with indomitable spirit boldly offered suggestions on ways evolution could have modified the mouths of birds as a multiple utility tool!
With some mid-day moonlighting, he had refereed, collated and assimilated information with which he would be able to wing it. An apt modus operandi for this situation on avians, where he found himself floundering like a fledgling bird and hoping to land on solid ground.
“Flight is a biological imperative that demands a lightweight and a streamlined frame. The small, feathered, carnivorous Theropod dinosaurs was the template. Building on this, around 150–165 million years ago, the avian species per se started evolving as a specialized subgroup of Theropods.
Thus, the birds can be considered as the living dinosaurs and descendants of bipedal, reptile-like ancestors. In the bird’s family tree, their immediate ancestors were the small, agile and feathered dinosaurs such as Dromaeosaurids and Troodontids. By the late Jurassic era, the species with a mix of dinosaurian traits (teeth, long bony tail) and bird-like traits (feathers, wings) had evolved.
After spending over tens of millions of years in body size shrinking exercises, these ancestors repurposed the feathers of the dinosaurs and ended with hollow bones, a Wishbone (furcula), and the three-toed limbs to suit the needs of perching, holding and flying.
While being shrunk in size and repurposed, the birds ended up with small mouths and sharp beaks only as tools to feed and survive. Today, these birds carry a 66-million-year-old dinosaur lineage, which miraculously survived the catastrophic Cretaceous extinction event.
You are all familiar with the red vented bulbul and taking it as an example let us see why birds do not lift heavy, squirming nestlings. A nestling may weigh up to 10 to15gm. Consider this - the bird has to take to air with a nestling, fly through wind resistance and against gravity. This effort requires immense strength and specialised gripping tools, which an adult bulbul simply does not possess. In this condition, even lifting an egg, weighing just 2-3 gm, itself will be a herculean task and where is the question of the bird shifting the nestlings? Will this not be a tall order for an adult bulbul, itself weighing about 40 to 60gm?
They are not alone in this regard. Even powerful birds of prey, like eagles and hawks which have strong, razor-sharp talons do not attempt to grasp a fragile chick.
The kids had one last question. “Is there any exception in the avian world?”
“Yes. But like that saying, ‘one lark does not make the summer, if at all some birds do shift their nestlings, though it would be the rarest of rare occurrence.”
The grandchildren were
wonderstruck and confused in equal measures, unable to digest or decide why
they troubled him with that boomerang question. They thought, “All along he had
been feigning ignorance by pointing out at the level of education he had
received. Was it a smoke screen? Or, is he trying to hoodwink us with overflow
of information, which could be relevant to us only after another 4 to 5 years? Or
is he trying to scare us, wanting not to be burdened with us during summer
holidays? Or is he trying to learn things in the pretext of clearing our
doubts? If doubts can be cleared while answering other’s doubts, then why many
don’t try this technique?”
After a day, the grandfather came to know the real purpose. The grandchildren were chit chatting among themselves, thinking that 'with his not so sharp hearing’, he may not come to know of the content of their discussion. They did not realise that a gentle breeze blowing towards their grandfather became their villain. The breeze carried the conversation into the ears of their grandfather, clearly but not loud enough, who strained himself to catch every syllable that came his way
The eldest in the gang grilled the younger kid, “Why were you asking questions, particularly about the birds and their young ones? The kid with an innocent aplomb replied, "Don't you know that school will be reopening tomorrow and grandpa will be leaving shortly thereafter?"
“What these have to do with your questions?”
“Dummy! I have to submit a short write up on some aspect of life form!”
“Then why
should it be about birds and not on sharks or whales?"
“Our grandfather had been telling me many times, that he is afraid of depths. Why to frighten his old bones? The birds appeared to be a safe bet.”
“Suppose he had been telling you, that he fears heights, then what would have you done?"
“Easy peachy. I would have settled for earthworms! I had options!”
After hearing the entire conversation, the old man understood that they did not ask their doubts to clear their or his doubts but to collect material for a write up, based on his sound knowledge!
Then he thought, why do we do what we do? Will Google or Wikipedia help?
