"The Macaw : Clay Variety"

From National Geographic 1994, the research zoologist CHARLES A. MUNN asks "Why does the Macaw eat clay?" He make a research for many years to answer this question.

In southeastern Peru, lives one of the most beautiful varieties of birds in wildlife. Here, we can find dazzling wildlife living on the gray-pink clay. At 130-feet-altitude, the biggest class of parrots "Macaws" congregate.

There are 3 kinds of Macaws, the red&green is the biggest - the scarlet is slimmer with darker blue wings and yellow shoulders - the blue&yellow is more gold and turquoise. Macaws mate for life and live in a big crowd.

The food of Macaws is not the pulp of fruits but they eat the seeds inside. These make Macaws different from the other birds. But they also eat gray-pink clay because the clay is high in salts and minerals. Another reason is because many seeds that Macaws eat, have toxic chemical compounds and the clay can blend with the toxins and speed them through their bodies. So Macaws have to eat clay to detoxify themselves.