Most cockatoo species have large crests, and they look beautiful when raised. In fact, cockatoos raising crests explains a lot about their mood. But how come cockatoos have crests, and most parrots don’t have them? Have you ever wondered how cockatoos get their crests?
Like all birds, cockatoos evolved from dinosaurs and underwent many biological changes over time. [1] But the present-day cockatoos look very different from dinosaurs. This is because thousands of years of evolution altered their DNA sequencing. This same evolution caused the development of cockatoos’ crest.
Biologically speaking, the crest phenotype is encoded in genes with protein and its products. This protein gets changed when other genes are encoded with its allele. The difference in the crests of cockatoos is because of the modifier allele.
Cross-breeding also caused the development of the crest
Many biological changes occurred over millions of years, and many other features were formed during their evolution. During this period, some cockatoo species cross-bred with other species and possibly other parrots in the wild.
The product of their breeding produced cockatoos that looked like one parent but also had the features of the other parent. This caused the crest to grow in species that either had no crest or had a small crest.
For example, a cross-breeding between Major Mitchell’s cockatoo and Galah cockatoo produced hybrids that have dark colors and are almost the size of the galah cockatoo but have large crests. Their structure slightly resembles Major Mitchell’s cockatoos.
It’s amazing to see how these offsprings of Galah cockatoos have such large crests. By the way, they are not the only hybrids, there are several other hybrids of cockatoos, and they also possess unique features.
So, cockatoos get their crests. When cockatoos with crests breed with those without crests, the crest phenotype will ultimately encode in other genes. In this way, crests in cockatoos were developed, and now most cockatoos have crests on their heads.
Final Thoughts
The present-day hybrids are a true example of how cockatoos evolved over millions of years. They help us understand how some species would have developed and changed over time.
Moreover, the evolution of dinosaurs into birds also explains how different species of birds also look apart. So, it is no more surprising that some parrots, like cockatoos, have crests and others don’t.
