Cigarettes are bad for your health. But that's…

Cigarettes are bad for your health. But that's only if you smoke 'em. If you use them to streamline your nest, they might actually do you some good. Because birds that decorate their digs with discarded cigarette butts are less bothered by parasites. That's according to a new study in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters. When building a next , birds tend to make do with the materials at hand - or at beak. Twigs and leaves are popular choices. But what about city birds? Some reach for cigarettes, or at least the fluffy white filters found in their fibers. Scientists got to wondering whether this habit might provide the birds benefits other than comfy bedding. So they snubbed the nests of finches and sparrows that were living on the campus of the National University of Mexico. That's in the heart of Mexico City. And they found that the nests that were festooned with the most filters fiber had the lowest numbers of mites. Could be that the little blood suckers are turned off by nicoles. Or maybe they've heard about the dangers of secondhand smoke. But for the birds, a butt a day might just keep mites away.