Natures wonders: wounded parent behaviors (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, October 05, 2022, 19:37 (778 days ago) @ David Turell

The typical wounded wing:

https://www.the-scientist.com/notebook/avian-deception-more-widespread-than-previously-...

"Thompson found sporadic examples across avian species through an exhaustive literature search, followed by surveys sent to ornithologists, avian ecologists, and experienced birders around the world. In the end, she and her colleagues uncovered evidence that 285 avian species perform the broken-wing display.

"Mapping those behaviors onto the avian phylogenetic tree revealed that the trait spans from some of the most basal bird families, including pheasants and ducks, to more recently evolved taxa such as songbirds. “It’s pretty amazing,” Francis says, adding that he was surprised how “particular clades on the avian tree of life really just light up,” including blackbirds, warblers, and sparrows. The frequent and disjointed appearance of the behavior across the tree suggests it evolved independently several times, he adds.

"The analysis, published earlier this year, also indicates that predation risk has driven the trait’s evolution. “Birds that experience higher levels of predation, by visual predators in particular, tend to use the display more than those that do not,” Francis says. The team found that the farther the birds’ breeding zones were from the equator, the more likely the animals were to use the broken-wing display. One possible explanation for this relationship, Francis says, is that the portfolio of predators becomes increasingly diurnal—and more visual—towards the Earth’s poles.

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"In addition to broken-wing, false brooding, and the rodent run, other documented dishonest behaviors include playing dead, feigned exhaustion, false feeding, and pseudo-sleeping. Gómez-Serrano says some birds fake eating, pecking at nothing on the ground—perhaps giving predators the impression they’re distracted and easy to sneak up on. Some birds vocalize their lies. Burrowing owls (Athene cunicularia) hiss like rattlesnakes to protect against ground squirrels, and fork-tailed drongos (Dicrurus adsimilis) mimic meerkat alarm calls to scare the mammals into abandoning food. “I think there’s some other really interesting deceptive tactics out there that are worth exploring,” and we may be unaware of many, Francis says.

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"Filipe Cunha, a behavioral ecologist at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, happened upon a particularly unusual case of avian deception while studying Siberian jays (Perisoreus infaustus). “They’re definitely liars,” he says, explaining how the territorial birds fake an alarm call that’s typically reserved for alerting group members to the presence of predators such as sparrowhawks. Cunha determined that the jays deceive neighboring groups of Siberian jays to scare them into fleeing, after which the liars steal caches of scavenged meat that the tricked birds had hidden to survive the Arctic winter. He says that he hopes studying within-species dishonesty will shed light on how trust evolved in our own species.

"Research on avian deception highlights the importance and diversity of these behaviors as survival tools, Francis says. Consider a familiar example of a bird without known deception or indeed any other predation-avoidance behaviors: the extinct dodo, “which [people] were able to just walk up to and club because they had no evolutionary response to approaching humans or any other type of predator,” Francis says. “It’s worth keeping this quiver of tactics because otherwise reproductive success is zero.'”

Comment: like the opossum playing dead, these behaviors require conceptual thinking to be created. Gradually learned to become instinctual or God's help?