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Interaction Between Sensory And Postingestional Repellents In Starlings: Methyl Anthranilate And Sucrose, Larry Clark, J. Russell Mason

Larry Clark

Ingestion of concentrated sucrose solutions causes sickness in sucrase-defi­ cie_nt birds. As a result, some suggest that sucrose may represent an environmentally safe avian repellent. In the present experiments, we compared the repellency of sucrose to that of methyl anthranilate (MA), a known avian repellent. We also tested mixtures of sucrose and MA to investigate whether repellency could be enhanced, relative to sucrose or MA presentealo'!e. The results showed that the MA was strongly avoided in both drinking anf edmtnals. Conversely, only high sucrose concentrations were avoided, and only in dnnkmg tnals. No combination of MA and sucrose was as …