{"id":156088,"date":"2025-08-18T16:02:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/156088\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T16:02:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T16:02:13","slug":"scientists-confirm-what-every-beachgoer-secretly-fears-about-seabirds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/156088\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Confirm What Every Beachgoer Secretly Fears About Seabirds"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a seabird researcher, Leo Uesaka<\/a> spends most of his time reviewing hours of bird footage. That can get quite tedious and demanding at times, but every second is worth paying attention to\u2014after all, that\u2019s how you notice things like the penchant for seabirds to poop only while airborne.<\/p>\n

In a first-of-its-kind study published today in Current Biology<\/a>, Uesaka and his team report that streaked shearwaters\u2014large, unassuming seabirds common in East Asian waters\u2014engage in a very specific type of bathroom ritual. In addition to always pooping midair, shearwaters release their droppings at regular intervals, every 4 to 10 minutes, according to the researchers. And even when the birds are in the water, they\u2019ll take the extra step and fly into the air if they need to \u201cdrop feces,\u201d Uesaka, the study\u2019s lead author, explained to Gizmodo.<\/p>\n

The initial purpose of the project was to study how shearwaters use their legs during direct takeoffs from the sea surface, said Uesaka, a research fellow at the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo in Japan. But the birds were pooping so much and so often that it seemed like a waste of data not to additionally investigate the birds\u2019 bathroom habits, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince I was not aiming to record droppings in the original plan, I was surprised by the feces footage itself and how frequently they appeared in the footage [and] the regular timing pattern,\u201d Uesaka said.<\/p>\n

Researchers have studied bird droppings before but mostly conducted their investigations on land, Uesaka said. The new study is more or less the first time scientists have been able to observe seabird excretion behavior at sea. What made this possible was a \u201cslightly unusual\u2014and perhaps amusing\u2014method,\u201d Uesaka explained. Specifically, his team tracked individual shearwaters living on Funakoshi Ohshima<\/a>, an uninhabited island in Japan. Each bird was equipped with a small, rear-facing video camera on its belly, a position initially chosen to observe leg motion but that ended up providing a fantastic view of the birds\u2019 digestive dynamics.<\/p>\n

\"PoopingUesaka and colleagues attached small video cameras to the bellies of shearwaters to study their leg motions\u2014and, inadvertently, their bathroom ritual. Credit: Leo Uesaka <\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear why the birds behave this way, but Uesaka suspects that other seabirds with similar flight styles, such as the albatross, may share this same tendency. In any case, seabird droppings are unusually rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, suggesting they may be unintentionally fertilizing coastal waters. At the same time, avian influenza is often transmitted through feces, and the researchers hope further investigations into this ritual could shed light on how the disease spreads among wild seabirds.<\/p>\n

\u201cBird droppings may seem unpleasant,\u201d Uesaka said. \u201cBut as this study shows, they can reveal surprisingly interesting aspects of animal life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, pooping, in all seriousness, plays a vital role<\/a> in supporting the various parts of our natural ecosystem<\/a>. It\u2019s also a funny (to borrow from Uesaka\u2019s words) yet valuable way to engage with science. So the next time a seabird poops on you at the beach, don\u2019t take it personally\u2014it\u2019s just science doing its thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a seabird researcher, Leo Uesaka spends most of his time reviewing hours of bird footage. That can…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":156089,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[19528,90987,4301,90988,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-156088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-birds","9":"tag-feces","10":"tag-marine-biology","11":"tag-ornithology","12":"tag-science","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115050613744192263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}