RE: chicken wing-claws

["Tim Williams" <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Are you referring to carpal spurs, which are present on the wings of a 
number of birds?  (This feature is what gives the 'spur-winged plover' its 
name.)  Thus, these "wingclaws" of chickens and ducks would not be 
homologous to the claws (unguals) of the hoatzin.

Wing spurs and wing knobs are used in intraspecific combat, AFAIK.  They 
have been known to come off during a contest and remain lodged in the body 
of the other bird.


Tim




> To the list members:
>
> A few years back when I started to get a little more serious on dinosaurs, 
> I
> decided to check for myself if chickens would complie with their 
> dinosaurian
> origin, i. e., if they would have claws like their relative Ophistocomus.
> In fact Gallus retains wingclaws all through it's life as does the Muschovy
> duck, Cairina moschata.
> I'm just stating this to find out if anyone here knew about this.
>
> Renato

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