A photographic essay of a colony of Chestnut-headed bee-eaters.
Bee-eaters clearly eat a lot of insects and exoskeleton of most insect is made up of the tough protein chitin. The bee-eaters cannot digest some of these proteins and every so often will regurgitate a pellet of undigestible insect parts.
Chitin definition; a nitrogen-containing polysaccharide, related chemically to cellulose, that forms a semitransparent horny substance and is a principal constituent of the exoskeleton, or outer covering, of insects, crustaceans, and arachnids.
Bee-eaters clearly eat a lot of insects and exoskeleton of most insect is made up of the tough protein chitin. The bee-eaters cannot digest some of these proteins and every so often will regurgitate a pellet of undigestible insect parts.
Chitin definition; a nitrogen-containing polysaccharide, related chemically to cellulose, that forms a semitransparent horny substance and is a principal constituent of the exoskeleton, or outer covering, of insects, crustaceans, and arachnids.