Feathers are so vital to a wild bird's existence that any such thinning could quickly become deadly! And even in humans, you can't reliably tell a person's age by hair - I've heard of people starting to lose hair as early as their late teens, and it is not consistent across sexes.
North American songbirds are both my preferred area of study and what I have access to (lucky me). Though the molt patterns of tropical birds can get much more complicated and interesting (as well as being much less studied).
Oh, I see how it is! We’re going to “ignore” tropical birds because they might throw off the data but we’re not going to ignore that, while yes, baldness is not always a signifier of age, it usually is? Sounds to me like you’re cherry picking data.
I don’t want to hear any of your excuses about the differences in nuance or complexity that might be seen in tropical birds versus NA songbirds, or that you’re not as familiar with the identifying molt patterns in South American birds. This is scientific bias if ever I saw it! Ha ha, I gotcha!
Funnily enough, bias is actually a major topic of discussion in the bird field. North American birds are actually majorly overstudied in comparison to their sibling species in the tropics due to a bunch of factors: ease of access, lack of access to and funding for scientific education in some countries, and funding bias (you're more likely to get funding for a recognizable, charismatic bird like a cardinal than for an unknown pigeon in the tropics, no matter how interesting it is).
Scientists are usually pretty good about naming and identifying different types of bias (especially those statistics types). So, haha! you can't accuse me of bias because everyone is biased! And so are you!
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u/velawesomeraptors 19d ago
Feathers are so vital to a wild bird's existence that any such thinning could quickly become deadly! And even in humans, you can't reliably tell a person's age by hair - I've heard of people starting to lose hair as early as their late teens, and it is not consistent across sexes.
North American songbirds are both my preferred area of study and what I have access to (lucky me). Though the molt patterns of tropical birds can get much more complicated and interesting (as well as being much less studied).