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Home » Radio Archive » Daily Show » Baby Bird Passwords

Baby Bird Passwords

June 19, 2014
https://podcast.scienceupdate.com/140619_sciup_wren.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window

BOB HIRSHON (host):

A bird’s secret code.  I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.

Superb fairy wrens flickr David Jenkins
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

Category: Daily Show, Station DownloadTag: Acoustics & Sound, Animal Behavior, Wildlife
Previous Post: « Podcast for 18 June 2014
Next Post: Komodo Dragon Housework »

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