Quantitative Evaluation of Tactile Foraging Behavior in Pekin and Muscovy Ducks

Abstract

Ducks have developed a variety of foraging strategies that utilize touch sensitive bills to match their ecological niche within wetlands. These techniques include diving, sieving, dabbling, and grazing. Ducks exhibiting tactile specialization in foraging outperform visual and non-tactile foraging ducks in behavioral experiments and have a higher percentage of light-touch mechanoreceptor neurons expressing Piezo2 in the trigeminal ganglia. Belonging to two different tribes of Anseriformes, the well-studied tactile specialist Pekin (Tribe Anatini: Anas platyrhynchos domestica) and lesser studied Muscovy (Tribe Cairinini: Cairina moschata domestica) ducks were tested on a series of experiments to assess these birds’ functional tactile acuity. Both species of duck were able to separate out and consume edible items from increasing amounts of inedible plastiline clay distractors. They could also both be trained to associate a food reward with plastiline stimuli of differing size and shape using touch alone. However, only females of each species could learn to associate food reward with otherwise identical stimuli differing only in hardness. Pekin females performed significantly better than Muscovy females suggesting the anatomical specializations present in many Anatini may contribute to this type of tactile acuity. These findings have potential relevance in understanding the evolution of tactile ability and feeding ecology.

3D architecture and a bicellular mechanism of touch detection in mechanosensory corpuscle

“…Avian Meissner corpuscles are structurally and functionally similar to their mammalian counterparts. Meissner corpuscles endow humans with the remarkable ability to manipulate objects and tools, facilitate sensorimotor control in mice, and enable tactile specialist birds to carry out a multitude of foraging behaviors (2,8,(25)(26)(27). While this manuscript was finalized, a preprint study reported the 3D architecture of the mouse Meissner corpuscle by FIB-SEM, which, together with earlier literature, permits a detailed comparison with the avian structure (28).…”

3D architecture and a bi-cellular mechanism of touch detection in mechanosensory corpuscle

“…The copyright holder for this preprint (which this version posted April 6, 2023. ; https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.05.535701 doi: bioRxiv preprint Avian Meissner corpuscles are structurally and functionally similar to their mammalian counterparts. Meissner corpuscles endow humans with the remarkable ability to manipulate objects and tools, and enable tactile specialist birds to carry out a multitude of foraging behaviors 5,7,[22][23][24][25] . Whether mammalian LCs are mechanosensitive remains to be determined, but appears likely given that dissociated murine Schwann cells are mechanosensitive in culture 10,11 .…”

Welfare of ducks, geese and quail on farm

“…West et al (2022) described a significant difference in foraging behaviour between waterfowl species with Domestic ducks almost exclusively using a 'deep dabbling' behaviour when foraging, that involved fully submerging the bill and vigorously churning the water around them, whereas Muscovy ducks shifted to a 'surface dabbling' behaviour, skimming the surface of the water and producing very little water movement. Muscovy ducks are performing much less foraging by dabbling compared to grazing (West et al, 2022). As an example, Downs et al (2017) described that Muscovy ducks were spending only 1.4% of their time foraging by dabbling or probing in soil compared to 25% foraging by grazing or gleaning from the ground.…”

“…Domestic ducks make use of water for foraging, feeding, drinking, exploration, even without prior experience (Donkin, 1989;Heyn et al, 2006;Liste et al, 2012a;Downs et al, 2017), just like their wild ancestors (see Section 3.1.1). West et al (2022) described a significant difference in foraging behaviour between waterfowl species with Domestic ducks almost exclusively using a 'deep dabbling' behaviour when foraging, that involved fully submerging the bill and vigorously churning the water around them, whereas Muscovy ducks shifted to a 'surface dabbling' behaviour, skimming the surface of the water and producing very little water movement. Muscovy ducks are performing much less foraging by dabbling compared to grazing (West et al, 2022).…”