canary, (species Serinus canaria), popular cage bird of the family Fringillidae (order Passeriformes). It owes its coloration and sustained vocal powers to 400 years of selective breeding by humans. Varieties called rollers trill almost continuously, the notes running together; choppers have a loud trill of distinct notes. Well-known breeds include Hartz Mountain, Norwich, and Yorkshire. The average life span of a caged canary is 10–15 years; some have survived for more than 20 years. Listen: The song of the canary
The canary is native to the Canary, Azores, and Madeira islands. The wild form is streak-backed and mostly greenish brown. Among other members of the genus are the serin of Europe and the brimstone canary, or bully seedeater (S. sulphuratus) of Africa, which is also kept as a pet.
For the wild canary in the United States, see goldfinch; woodwarbler. For the wild canary in Australia, see warbler. For information on the black-throated canary, see seedeater.
Etymology edit
The Latin Insula Canaria (after one of the larger islands, Gran Canaria), which means “island of dogs,” is the source of the name of the birds. This is in reference to the Canary Islands of Spain, which are known for their “vast multitudes of dogs of very large size.” [8] At Midway Atoll, a white canary nests alongside a feral yellow canary
Miner’s canary edit Mining foreman R. Thornburg shows a small cage with a canary used for testing carbon monoxide gas in 1928. Resuscitation cage with an oxygen cylinder serving as a handle used to revive a canary for multiple uses in detecting carbon monoxide pockets within mines
In British coal mining, mice were employed as sentinel species to detect carbon monoxide starting about 1896[15], following John Scott Haldane’s 1895 proposal. [16] Because small warm-blooded animals breathe more quickly than humans do, toxic gases like carbon monoxide or asphyxiant gases like methane[17] in the mine would first affect them before the miners. A human will need twenty times longer to be affected by carbon monoxide than a mouse, who will experience effects in a matter of minutes. [18] Later, it was discovered that canaries were a more reliable and sensitive indicator because they displayed more obvious symptoms of distress. Their use in mining is documented from around 1900. [19] The birds were occasionally housed in carriers with tiny oxygen bottles attached to help them breathe again. In British mines, the use of miners canaries was phased out in 1986 [20][21]. [22][23].
A person or thing that acts as an early warning system for an impending crisis is commonly referred to as a “canary in a coal mine.” By analogy, a species (referred to as an indicator species) that is impacted by an environmental danger before other species is is used to describe the term “climate canary,” acting as an early warning system for the other species about the danger. [24].
Use in research edit
Canaries have been used extensively in basic research to understand how songbirds encode and produce song, as well as in studies of neurogenesis, or the birth of new neurons in the adult brain. As a result, canaries have been used as model animals to study how the brains of vertebrates learn, form memories, and recall coordinated motor actions.
Canaries are sometimes used to avoid hazardous human testing. They were used in early insect repellent testing by Wasicky et al. in 1949. Human testing could only yield a small sample size, and the host ↔ repellent ↔ insect interaction’s inherent variance is too great. Canaries, among other test animals, provided larger sample sizes cheaply. [27].
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