Noise pollution and its serious effects on birds

Geelong: Recently, researchers have found that noise pollution has serious long-term negative effects on the health and reproductive systems of hummingbirds.

According to the research published in the journal ‘Science’, a team of scientists researched the zebra finch and its eggs and babies, whose researchers said that the growth and health problems of the birds’ eggs were directly exposed to noise pollution. are the result of

“This research really surprised us, not just because of the negative effects, but also because of the long-term nature of those effects,” said Mylene Marriott, professor of ecology at Deakin University in Australia.

Previous research has linked noise during bird development to health problems later in life, but scientists haven’t been able to identify exactly what the noise affects. On parents or children?

Maleen and his team placed zebra finch birds before and after birth in different acoustic environments that included traffic noise and natural sounds such as birds chirping or leaves.

Both the eggs and chicks of the birds were exposed to these environments. These eggs and chicks were separated from their parents during the research.

The researchers found that eggs exposed to traffic noise hatched 14.5 percent less than those exposed to natural noise, and weighed 14.5 percent less.

Similarly, these effects were observed in chicks until adulthood. The team observed that birds exposed to traffic noise produced 59 percent fewer offspring than birds exposed to natural sounds.