Page 178 - Allah's Gentle Artistry

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The babies of diving birds like grebes travel on their
mothers' backs when they are swimming on the water's
surface. In order to keep them from falling off, the moth-
er spreads her wings out slightly and feeds them by
stretching her head back and to one side. When the
young are first hatched, the mother and father make
them eat feathers they have collected from the water's

surface or plucked from their own bodies. Every baby
swallows quite a lot of feathers, which are difficult for
them to digest, but are not really intended as food.
Rather than being digested, these feathers collect in
the babies' stomach—for a very important reason. Later
on, fish bones and other indigestible bits of food will col-
lect there, and so the feathers prevent injury to the ba-

bies' delicate stomachs and digestive systems.