Male birds in heavy sexual union mimic the disturbing movement sound of other birds to deceive their mate and stop escaping, a new Australian study has found.
The amazing discovery was made after an audio and video study of brilliant birds – a species known for unusual dance practices and the ability to report the calls of more than 20 other species.
Researchers have found that males can simultaneously reproduce the “moving” vocal sounds, and the sounds of fluttering wings made by other bird species when trying to intimidate a predator.
The male imitation is so accurate that not only does it fool the female lyrebird, but repetition tests also found that other small birds were deceived into thinking there was a threat nearby.
Captive calves are known to mimic other sounds, including chainsaws and car alarms.
Dr Anastasia Dalziell, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Wollongong, led the research published in the journal Current Biology.
“Male calves have the ability to do amazing and terrible things,” she said.
Dalziell first heard lyrebirds mimic the mobile calls in 2007 and went on to study the potential in detail in two populations – one in Sherbrooke Forest in Victoria, the other in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales. These places are 700km apart.
Along with her colleagues, she was convinced that the barrier had something to do with mating but it was not immediately clear why.
But other scientists have identified similar behaviors in other animals. Male topi antelopes use a false alarm call if females move away from their “display areas”.
The male corn borer lion resembles the sound of predatory bats long enough for a female to freeze, giving the male time to mate.
“Lyrebirds uses the same strategy, but does it in a very over-the-top way, as lyrebirds seem to do,” Dalziell said.
The research found that male birds did not reproduce the sound when they had attracted a female to their “display area” – a small area in the woods, cleared for courtship – or when foaming. .
Those two moments, Dalziell says, are crucial to reproductive success “suggesting that imitating a mobile herd is a critical sexual behavior for males”.
She said they were more confident when their photographs showed female birds-birds accepting the imitation calls and returning to display areas.
Upon close analysis of the imitation calls, researchers were able to find moving cues resembling eastern yellow brambles, brown hawthorns, and whitish-white scratches. At times, the researchers found warning calls that resembled two species of possum.
To compare the moving chorus to a real one, Dalzielle said they had to use their own deceptive behavior to get local birds to reproduce the calls.
“We threw in a rubber snake,” she said.
The male lyrebirds always used the deceptive trick if females tried to escape while breeding, Dalziell said.
“The males pull out all the stops until the female mates. It is just one of the many things that men do.
“They have this beautiful dance tradition and they sing from dawn to dusk, so the woman gets those other beautiful signs. We shouldn’t see the lyrebirds as horrible.
“We tend to be romantic about the hen plant, but they are animals and capable of amazing things. But they also do things we don’t like or that are difficult and troublesome, just like people. ”
Lyrebirds regularly imitate other species and Dalziell said their repertoire expanded beyond 20 different species.
“They only mimic local species. They do it mostly in the breeding season and it’s part of their chorus – and it’s very, very real. ”