Multimedia Gallery
All images in this series
American coot parent and chick
An American coot (Fulica americana) parent and its highly ornamented chick. A study found the bright colors of the chicks of American coots help their parents choose favorites.
[Research supported by National Science Foundation grants IOS 0808579 and IOS 0443807.]
Learn more in the University of California, Santa Cruz, news story The mysterious case of the ornamented coot chicks has a surprising explanation. (Date image taken: June 25, 2008; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: May 21, 2020)
Credit: Bruce Lyon
Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.
Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.
Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.
Also Available:
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (2.0 MB)
Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.