Natures wonders: brood parasites not cuckoos (Introduction)

by David Turell , Saturday, October 03, 2020, 19:44 (1300 days ago) @ David Turell

In Zambia each species of indigobird and whydah chooses to lay its eggs in the nests of a particular species of grassfinch. Their hosts then incubate the foreign eggs, and feed the young alongside their own when they hatch:

https://phys.org/news/2020-10-birds-mimic-host-nestlings-foster.html

"Grassfinches are unusual in having brightly colored and distinctively patterned nestlings, and nestlings of different grassfinch species have their own unique appearance, begging calls and begging movements. Vidua finches are extremely specialized parasites, with each species mostly exploiting a single host species.

"Nestlings of these 'brood-parasitic' Vidua finches were found to mimic the appearance, sounds and movements of their grassfinch host's chicks, right down to the same elaborately colorful patterns on the inside of their mouths. (my bold)

"'The mimicry is astounding in its intricacy and is highly species-specific," said Dr. Gabriel Jamie, lead author on the paper and a research scientist in the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, and at the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town.

"He added: "We were able to test for mimicry using statistical models that approximate the vision of birds. Birds process color and pattern differently to humans so it is important to analyze the mimicry from their perspective rather than just relying on human assessments.'"

Comment: The nesting trick and the mimicry can be explained by simply copying but the bolded note about mouth coloring is a design issue and requires God to step in, in my view.