Baby Bird Passwords
June 19, 2014
An Australian bird thwarts nest invaders by requiring its young to sing a secret call to get fed.
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Transcript
BOB HIRSHON (host):
A bird’s secret code. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
Male and female superb fairy wren. (David Jenkins/flickr)
Cuckoos are famous for laying their eggs in other birds’ nests, pawning off all the care and feeding of their offspring to a hapless host parent. But superb fairy wrens have evolved a defense against the freeloaders. According to behavioral ecologist Sonia Kleindorfer of Flinders University in Australia, mother fairy wrens sing to their eggs while they’re in the nest – like this:
(Mother incubation song)
After the babies hatch, they have to sing a special call note that matches key elements of that song in order to get fed. For instance:
(baby bird call notes)
KLEINDORFER:
Whether you learn the password correctly will determine whether or not you will live or die.
HIRSHON:
She and her colleagues discovered that each nest has a different password call.
Baby cuckoos often don’t get the password quite right, and are often rejected by the host parents.
HIRSHON:
I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.
Read more here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982212011256
