Bustards may use plants to treat STIs during the breeding season

The person is Christa Lesté-Lasserre.

A wild turkey-like bird is more attractive to potential mates because it eats more toxic plants during the breeding season.

The male great bustards spend a lot of energy in feather displays to attract females. They show their cloaca to females, who may look for signs of infections, by pecking at it.

According to Luis Bautista-Sopelana at the Spanish National Research Council in Madrid, only around 10% of males successfully mate, so they might benefit from self-medicating prior to these exams.

Bautista-Sopelana and his colleagues found that great bustards ate more blisters during the breeding season, which can be dangerous. He says the beetles had a pharmaceutical effect.

Bautista-Sopelana wondered if that might explain why the birds like to eat plants that are toxic to some extent and have little nutrition.

At one of the largest bustard breeding grounds, he and his colleagues collected these plants. They obtained 17 extracts and essential oils from the leaves and flowers of the plants.

The researchers put extracts and oils from different organisms in different dishes in the lab.

Plants have notable effects on the pathogens. Flower extracts killed up to 98.6 percent of the protozoa and up to 81.3 percent of the worms. The impact of purple viper's bugloss was moderate, with its flower extracts preventing growth by up to 52 percent.

The team re-analyzed 623 faecal samples collected for a previous study and found that the amount of common poppies in the diet of male bustards was higher than that of females.

They say that bustards select toxic plants to prevent or treat infections.

According to Bautista-Sopelana, there have been many studies that suggest that wild animals self-medicate. He says that it is not a new phenomenon. We were surprised by the scientific literature on self-medication in wild animals.

Further studies are needed. Although the efficacy of self-medication in bustards is not proven, the behavior of bustards in selecting these plants needs an explanation. It isn't likely to be solely nutrition-based.

There is a journal reference in the field of ecology and evolution.

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