Fluff up

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A female shelduck puffs up
Fluffed female blackbird

In ornithology, the erecting of the plumage is called puffing up , also puffing up . Colloquially, the term is also applied to people who make themselves important. Word forms handed down from earlier times include diphthong plaustern (around 1600) and plūster (e) n as an intensive formation to (ūte) plūsen , 'pluck out'.

General

When fluffing up, the feathers that normally lie next to the body contour are straightened up by the action of the spring muscles embedded in the dermis and thereby spread apart from the body. The process is controlled by what are known as Herbst's bodies, which act as mechanoreceptors . The puffing up widens the resting layer of air surrounding the body and thus reduces the body's heat dissipation through convection . Functionally, this corresponds to the onset of hair in mammals. In addition to its function in thermoregulation, fluffing also serves to enlarge the body contour, i.e. to appear larger in courtship, in competitive and territorial fights.

Fluffing in budgies

Fluff at the sick budgie

In budgerigars , various states of health are assumed when fluffing up. However, even experts cannot interpret the state of mind of the bird with certainty, as they vary from animal to animal. Budgerigars often fluff themselves up when they are comfortable, in this state the birds often sing. The animals then make a particularly fluffy impression in the area of ​​the throat spots and cheek spots and through a supposedly relaxed look. The posture of the body appears relaxed and the plumage in the neck and head area is set up. The facial feathers are often placed over the beak so that it is barely visible.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ fluff up . Duden online
  2. ↑ fluff. In: Digital dictionary of the German language .
  3. ^ Franz-Viktor Salomon, Hans Geyer, Uwe Gille: Anatomy for veterinary medicine . Thieme Verlag, 2015. ISBN 978-3-8304-1289-2 , p. 812.
  4. ↑ Winfried Ahne, Hans G. Liebich, Manfred Stohrer: Zoology: textbook for students of veterinary medicine and agricultural sciences . Schattauer Verlag, 2000. ISBN 978-3-7945-1764-0 . on page 141.
  5. ↑ Peter M Kappeler: Behavioral Biology . Springer-Verlag, 2016, ISBN 978-3-662-53145-7