Rough start for baby birds leads to a plump future

NEWCASTLE, England, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- For baby birds, malnourishment paves the the way for a fat future.

According to researchers at Newcastle University, birds who start off life with less to eat turn out greedier and plumper in adulthood.

Scientists followed the evolving eating habits of European starling nestlings as they aged over several months. Smaller chicks typically lose out to their bigger brothers and sisters in the frenzy of retrieving food from their parents. Researchers emphasized this by placing smaller chicks in broods with larger siblings.

"The smallest chicks were bottom of the heap and had a tougher time because they would have had to beg hardest for food," Newcastle researcher Clare Andrews explained in a press release.

As they matured, these same birds tended to overeat and more aggressively search for and hoard food, suggesting the stress of difficult beginnings have lasting impact.

Given the choice between easily accessible crumbs and food buried in sand, the runts spent a disproportionate amount of time searching for buried bits. When they turned their attention to the easy crumbs, they overindulged.

"Building up body fat reserves as a safeguard against times of potential future famine is an evolved survival mechanism," Andrews added.

The fear of future food shortages appears to play an outsized role in the psyche of smaller chicks.

"This study may also teach us something about ourselves as surprisingly, there's evidence that obesity is common in people lacking a reliable supply of food," Andrews said. "Perhaps people too have evolved to eat more and take more interest in food if worried where their next meal will come from."

The findings were published in the journal Animal Behaviour.