A gull drinks seawater but drips brine from its nostrils. Why there?
Show answer & explanation
Answer: Nasal duct plumbing
Nasal duct plumbing ✓ — Nasal duct plumbing is the mechanism. Seabird salt glands sit above the eyes, pull sodium chloride from blood, and send concentrated fluid toward the nasal cavity or bill. The runny-nose look is head plumbing that exports salt while preserving useful water.
Feather sweat glands — Feather sweat glands borrow a mammal-like idea. Feathers are not the outlet; paired skull-region glands do the filtering. The useful contrast is that seabirds are solving desalination, not cooling, by routing salt into a small head-plumbing system.
Food coming back up — Food coming back up is the wrong picture. Seabirds do something more selective: salt moves from blood into a glandular route near the nostrils. That is why the drip is not just swallowed seawater returning, but a small export stream for excess salt.
More Animal Behavior questions
- Why can the same soft barn-owl feathers that mute flight make rainy hunting worse?
- Why is silent flight useful even if a mouse never hears the owl coming?
- Besides ordinary airflow noise, what sound can the velvety surface on owl flight feathers help reduce?
- At high wing angles, why can the comb-like feathers on an owl's leading edge make airflow quieter?
- What lets a barn owl glide slowly and quietly, apart from its fringed, velvety feathers?
- Male platypuses have venomous ankle spurs. Why are they probably not mainly prey-hunting tools?