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> much more complete --14dae934036b67530a04bbb85af7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 hi folks, This was an interesting article and definitely generated a lot of good discussion. Unfortunately, I agree: to me, the results of the study (presented in the Behavioral Ecology article) did not demonstrate what the authors claimed they did: It does look like Shrikes with white masks hunted at a different angle to the sun, and had lower hunting efficiency than unpainted and control shrikes. However, this only demonstrates an effect of white paint around the eyes on orientation angle during hunting and on hunting success. In other words, this does not necessarily provide any information about the *function *of the black mask - it just suggests that having white (paint) around the eyes might be less conducive to hunting vs having a black mask. The authors state in the discussion " *we demonstrate that the facial mask of the Masked Shrike serves the purpose of allowing the bird to face into the sun, enabling it to identify prey by its larger shadow cast toward the perched shrike, and enabling the shrike to approach the prey without alerting it to the impending attack*"
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