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I saw this harrowing video on how barnacle goslings have to jump off very high cliffs because the parent's can't feed them. The death rate seems high. Why did natural selection come to favor jumping rather than the parents bringing food to the nest like most bird species?

From Wikipedia:

Like all geese, the goslings are not fed by the adults. Instead of bringing food to the newly hatched goslings, the goslings are brought to the ground. Unable to fly, the three-day-old goslings jump off the cliff and fall; their small size, feathery down, and very light weight helps to protect some of them from serious injury when they hit the rocks below, but many die from the impact.

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  • $\begingroup$ This page mentions geese and sais they can regurgitate food: caspervanleeuwen.info/images/PDFs/… Geese prefer acorns and proper carbohydrate, and if there is not enough food and there's too far to fly, perhaps the geese and the chicks deplete themselves and don't consume enough to grow maximally. Those geese didn't find a good nest, they only need to be 10 meters high up the cliff?! $\endgroup$
    – bandybabboon
    Sep 26, 2019 at 19:55
  • $\begingroup$ It means more food and faster growth; and higher chance of survival if they stay with the parents. It is explained for guillemots whose chicks (jumplings) jump off cliff also based on a study; thus it should be similar for barnacle geese. "Our measurements show that the male feeds the chick twice as much as both parents could if the chick remained in the colony," says Morten Frederiksen of Aarhus University in Denmark. Source: earthtouchnews $\endgroup$
    – ermanen
    Oct 19, 2019 at 23:41

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