Question: if your trying to save a bird why do you take blood samples from them

Helen Gath answered on 16 Jun 2014:

Good question. There are a few reasons, one important one being that we can identify the sex of the bird. Although there are slight colour differences in the beaks between males and females, and a pinkish ring around the male’s neck, it’s very hard to tell sexes apart when they are young. It can take several years to develop these differences. When they are mature enough to be breeding it is much easier to work out the sex, as the female stays in the cavity looking after her eggs and only comes out when the male brings her food. Sounds a good life!
Another very important reason is that we can build a family tree. I’m not sure how much you know about genetics but lets try! You may have noticed that you share similarities with your family, maybe a big nose, ginger hair, bright blue eyes. This is because you are related and you share very similar ‘genes’. In some ways, genes are like a bar code; totally unique, but similar to closely related products. You have a very unique bar code, but it is still very similar to your mum’s, dad’s, brother’s bar code. However, you may look totally different from your classmates because you are not related by family, and therefore your genes are even more different.
Why does this relate to the birds? Well, in nature, it is very rare for animals to breed with their brothers and sisters. This is because a little internal alarm goes off encouraging them not to do so and it is unhealthy. There are many risks associated with breeding among close relatives, like a greater risk to disease, physical deformities, weakness…..in other words, much healthier offspring could be produced if the parents are unrelated and ‘inbreeding’ is avoided.

I promise i’m not going off on a tangent. With the echo parakeet, and other rare animals across the world , the chances of inbreeding are much higher because the number of animals is very low. Therefore it is much harder to find someone to breed with who is not your relative. For the echo parakeet, the population was once as low as 8 -20 individuals, making the chance of inbreeding quite high. They couldn’t be fussy about who their mate was! Today, scientists are very interested in understanding how this may have changed the genetic make up of the population. Does it mean they are more vulnerable to disease? Are we going to see problems later on because the population today, in 2014, originates from a very small number of individuals? By taking blood samples we can work out the genetic bar-code of each bird, and see how related they are. This knowledge can help us look after them properly and plan their future management. If we do see lots of unhealthy birds, it can help us understand if the cause is internal, i.e. due to their genetics, or eternal, such as really bad weather, or the spread of a disease by another animal.

I hope this makes sense, but please ask again if it’s not clear! Great question though 🙂