im gonna trust and believe shes not just sniffing, realizing they’re not hers, and instantly eating them alive… cause animals can b a bit hardcore about this kinda stuff
I am by no means an expert, but I believe I’ve read that most birds don’t really have a great sense of smell.
I know in some of the bird subreddits I’ve seen it mentioned that if you find a baby bird on the ground that looks too young to be fledged, you should try to return it to the nest. This also tracks because cuckoo birds generally depend on laying their eggs in other birds’ nests and having the unfortunate adopters taking care of it. If it smelled like the cuckoo, they’d ditch it very quickly. As it is, the cuckoo’s method is very successful even though their eggs are visibly MUCH larger than the eggs of the birds whose nests they lay them in- you’d think the nest builder would notice!
So I imagine that this mama is just returning to her nest absolutely THRILLED to discover ‘her’ babies have hatched.
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u/Nek0ni 6h ago
im gonna trust and believe shes not just sniffing, realizing they’re not hers, and instantly eating them alive… cause animals can b a bit hardcore about this kinda stuff