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Human beings associate stress with city life and, in the countryside, we have the image of being able to relax in the countryside. What happened to the birds? Well, if we look at blackbirds, we could say that they adapt to the urban environment so well that it does not disturb or alter them any more than the natural environment.
In the Pedralbes monastery in Barcelona, blackbirds (Turdus merula) can be seen throughout the year. His singing is wonderful. I have been able to photograph the female and the male for The Readers' Photos of La Vanguardia.
These birds caught the attention of scientists, who studied their behavior and came to the conclusion that city blackbirds are no more stressed than those who live in the countryside.
An international team in which researchers from the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN) and the Doñana Biological Station (EBD) participated, both from the CSIC, among other institutions, confirmed that, in blackbirds, no differences in physiological stress are observed if They live in an urban or rural environment. This was stated in a study published in Science of The Total Environment.
"Urbanization changes the landscape structure and ecological processes of natural habitats," the researchers report, "while urban areas expose animal communities to novel challenges, they can also provide more stable environments in which fluctuations are buffered." "environmental".
"The ecology and physiology of species may determine their ability to cope with urban life. However, the physiological mechanisms underlying organisms' responses to urbanization and whether different physiological systems are equally affected by urban environments remain being little known," detailed the presentation of the study.
Thus, the researchers decided to measure "indicators of physiological stress at the endocrine, immunological and cellular levels (corticosterone levels in feathers, ratio of heterophils to lymphocytes and heat shock proteins) in urban and non-urban European blackbirds (Turdus merula) in 10 European populations".
Among the three variables, "we found consistent differences in feather corticosterone, which was higher in non-urban habitats," they detail. This effect seems to depend on sex, being greater in males.
On the contrary, "no significant differences were found between urban and non-urban habitats in the other two physiological indicators."
The conclusion is that, overall, the findings "suggest that adult European blackbirds living in urban and non-urban habitats do not differ in terms of physiological stress at the organism level."
Therefore, if we ever feel stressed in the city, perhaps we should take blackbirds as an example...
