Some may think the time spent decorating and redecorating ones home is a waste of humans time. Thousands of jobs are made of interior decorators that seem to have an eye for what looks good. It turns out that we could have just went to the pet store and bought a Bowerbird to do the job. Male Bowerbirds spend time creating beautiful love shacks to attract female mates. These nests that are built are used exclusively for mating. They will collect flowers, stones, feathers, and all kinds of things to create an intricate nest that will hopefully lure in the female. The most surprising factor about this behavior is that they even use color schemes in their decor. They tend to decorate with items of similar color. Research is now showing that Bowerbirds also create optical illusions to make themselves look bigger to mates! This is the first non-human to show this type of behavior.
As if this action was not good enough for the female, the males also sing while building their nest. Nearby males tend to build their nests close to each other as they try to take the light off of different male's nests. An aggressive behavior of these birds is to destroy the nests of other males that are around, so they cannot steal their attention.
The time and energy used to build these nests must be extremely costly in the life of the Bowerbirds. Therefore, the more decoration used must be an adaptation to increase the fitness of the bird. Otherwise, this odd animal behavior would not have evolved into what it is today.
Posted by Abbie Saranteas
Wow that's really neat! It's funny that the males in this species are the ones who do the home-decour. I wonder what they do with the nest after the male has successfully attracted a mate? Does he build a new nest to lay eggs in? Also, I wonder what the evolutionary benefit is of such decorations on a nest? It would make sense if it was protection for eggs (birds often line their nests with feathers for insulation and protection), but that doesn't make sense if the nest isn't even used for laying eggs in!
ReplyDelete-Posted by Johanna Brophy
Who knew Bowerbirds could be such the romantics! In regards to the color schemes that the birds choose, do the birds in general have a certain preference? Or do the colors selected vary in each individual male? Perhaps some colors are more appealing to females than others, and the males use this information to their advantage.
ReplyDeletePosted by Sara Corey
COOOOOOOOOLLLL!
ReplyDeleteI want to know more about those optical illusions. I wonder if there's any intent behind the construction of the illusion, or if natural selection simply favored those birds that build nests in a certain way that made them look bigger. It's also interesting to hypothesize about what "message" a well-built nest could send to females.
#pondering
Posted by Jonathan Flash
These birds are super cool. I have seen videos of their display. I do wonder if they all chose a particular color to decorate their bower with our just having the decorations all being the same color is more important. It would be really cool to provide the bowerbird with a variety of options for bower decorations. I think there are several specieds that try to make themselves look bigger but I would like to know more about the optical illusions.
ReplyDeletePosted By Caroline Adams
It definitely must be very costly to provide material for their nest. They are truly risking their lives just to attract a mate. It's really interesting how male birds also destroy the nests of other male birds just to compete for the female.
ReplyDeletePosted by Ryan Brooks
Ok, I looked up photos of their nests after reading this (because I had never heard of these birds) and WOW you weren't kidding about color. Some had random blue objects all around their nest. The nests in themselves are already interesting. For one, they are built on the ground, which I feel isn't super common in bird species, and they sort of have two parts that curve in towards each other. I love the fact that the males are the ones decorating in this situation. If only guys would decorate a house to attract girls!
ReplyDeletePosted by Caitlin Descovich O'Hare
I must admit, I had to look up some pics of bowerbird nests to see what they look like and all I can say is whoa. These birds can make some amazing nests. soe pics I thought were fake because of how well built and almost human-like some of them looked. I didn't know they built their nests on the ground. And the fact they set up lawn ornaments in front of their nests is just the icing on the cake. So cool. I wouldn't mind having some of these birds in my backyard. Have any studies been done on these birds to see if they'll use any colorful object provided to them, even human stuff?
ReplyDeletePosted by Austin Gray
Thanks for everyone's interest! Your comments were great and I'm glad everyone was as surprised as me. Ryan Brooks, I agree it must be extremely costly to build these nests. If this behavior has evolved, then I imagine the cost is outweighed by its benefits and it attracts many mates for the Bowerbird. I read that the nests are used for mating and other nests are used for eggs. This does seem like a costly behavior because the birds will have to make another nest, but I imagine such bright colors will attract many predators who are after the bird eggs. Therefore, it would be more beneficial to build a separate nest.
ReplyDeletePosted by Abbie Saranteas
Great post Abbie! Very interesting. What techniques do the Bowerbirds use to make themselves appear bigger? Also, what colors are the females more attracted to? I know there is a bird that will possess a longer tail in order to attract its mates. Its cost of having that is difficulty of avoiding predators but it is certainly worth the risk.
ReplyDeletePosted by Ryan Dulmaine