Bowerbirds and Creep Detecting
On the surprising two-way communication of avian amorous approaches
Here’s the reader version of a recent Tik Tok and Instagram Reel:
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8J5g9ns/
My good, good dudes. If birds can tell that they’re being creeps, what’s your excuse?
This study has everything. Cool cribs, males understanding boundaries, and a robot bird called “fembot.” That study is “Male satin bowerbirds, (Ptylonorhyncus violaceus), adjust their display intensity in response to female startling: an experiment with robotic females” and it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read.
Most of us know about how cool bowerbirds are; they’re the ones David Attenborough told us about in the Planet Earth documentaries. There we met a bowerbird who steals a felted heart to spruce up the interior decoration of his bachelor pad.
That’s already funny and charming and a little bittersweet to see man-made objects being incorporated into the natural world, but it’s not even the coolest thing about them.
See, bowerbirds not only build little houses to woo their female counterparts, but they also do complicated dances. This dance can be a little, let’s say, aggressive. Like the guy in the club whose cologne alerted you to him (derogatorily) back when he was still in line. But unlike slicked back hair, white bathing suit, sloppy steaks, white couch guy, bowerbirds know how to take a hint.
To prove this, researchers created a robot female bowerbird and yes they did call it a fembot. She was outfitted with a small computer, and again I am making none of this up, called a bird brain.
The bird brain could mimic common female responses. It worked. In the first tests the males were so excited to woo fembot that they knocked her head off.
The way a female shows consent is by crouching. And if she’s impressed, she will continue to visit that bower year after year. The stakes are high. So when males noticed that their dances were coming on too strong and eliciting a “startle” reaction in the (now reinforced) fembot, they dialed it down a little.
According to then grad student now professor at UC Davis Gail L. Patricelli, "Our observations of bowerbirds, that male display is very aggressive and that females are often startled, started us thinking that females might be threatened during display, and, for the benefit of both, females should signal their level of comfort with the males' display. Our experiments supported this view."
Unlike Deadpool, they were able to put forth less than maximum effort when the situation called for it.
They listened. They learned. They matched energies. They scored.
Dare I say very mindful? Very… oh we’re not doing that anymore, it’s played? alright
Can you write an article about how birds stay in a flock? I watch the birds and ducks at the local pond and sometimes they will break into small groups and fly off, like the migrating Canadian geese. Do they designate a leader and just follow them wherever they go, or maybe if they aren't ready to leave yet they just merge w another flock? How do they know which flock is theirs? Do they constantly just break apart and regroup elsewhere or are the flocks constantly changing with new and old members coming and going