Wattle (anatomy)

A wattle is a fleshy caruncle hanging from various parts of the head or neck in several groups of birds and mammals. Caruncles in birds include those found on the face, wattles, dewlaps, snoods and earlobes. Wattles are generally paired structures but may occur as a single structure when it is sometimes known as a dewlap. Wattles are frequently organs of sexual dimorphism. In some birds, caruncles are erectile tissue and may or may not have a feather covering.[1][2]

A rooster's wattles hang from the throat

Wattles are often such a striking morphological characteristic of animals that it features in their common name. For example, the southern and northern cassowary are known as the double-wattled and single-wattled cassowary respectively and there is a breed of domestic pig known as the red wattle.

Birds

Function

In birds, wattles are often an ornament for courting potential mates. Large wattles are correlated with high testosterone levels, good nutrition, and the ability to evade predators, which in turn indicates a potentially successful mate. It has also been proposed that ornamental organs such as wattles are associated with genes coding for disease resistance.[3] In umbrellabirds the wattle serves to amplify the birds' call. [4]

Examples
Southern hill myna in India showing yellow wattles on the head

Birds with wattles include:

Mammals

Mammals with wattles include:

  • many domestic goats have fleshy, fur-covered protuberances, called tassels, hanging on either side of the throat;
  • some domestic pigs, such as the kunekune, Lithuanian Native pig and the Red Wattle pig, as a fleshy protuberance hanging either side of the throat.
  • A common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus) with bright red facial wattles
  • A southern cassowary with double wattles hanging from the throat
  • A goat with small wattles at the base of its throat
  • Red wattle pig with wattles at the base of the throat
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See also

References
  1. John James Audubon, Dean Amadon, John L Bull. 1967 The Birds of America
  2. Richard Bowdler Sharpe. 1888. Catalogue of the Birds in the British Museum, British Natural History Museum, Department of Zoology
  3. Baratti, Mariella; Ammannati, Martina; Magnelli, Claudia; Massolo, Alessandro; Dessì-Fulgheri, Francesco (2010). "Are large wattles related to particular MHC genotypes in the male pheasant?". Genetica. 138: 657–665. doi:10.1007/s10709-010-9440-5. PMID 20145977.
  4. The Hutchinson encyclopedia - Page 1087 https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1859862888 (Oxford) Helicon Publishing Ltd, Jane Anson, Michael Broers - 2000 - The Amazonian species Cephalopterus ornatus, the ornate umbrella bird, has an inflatable wattle at the neck to amplify its humming call, and in display elevates a long crest (12 cm/4 in) lying above the bill so that it rises umbrella-like above ...
  5. "Hogan, C. Michael "Wild Turkey: Meleagris gallopavo", GlobalTwitcher.com, ed. N. Stromberg 2008".
  6. John White. 1790. Voyage to New South Wales
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