‘After you!’ A female bird’s flutter conveys a polite message to her mate

A wave goodbye. A bow. A thumbs-up. Human culture is full of gestures that can convey more than words ever could. Now, scientists have observed a pair of chivalrous birds joining the conversation. Video taken in Nagano, Japan, shows two Japanese tits ( Parus minor ) as they return to their nest inside a birdhouse with food for their young. The female lands on a nearby branch and flutters her wings toward her mate, who enters the house first; she follows shortly afterward. Observations of eight pairs of birds returning to the nest more than 300 times revealed that the females were the dominant flutterers, usually stopping to motion their mates into the nest first. But when the female didn’t flutter, she tended to enter first. That suggests the movement conveys the message “after you,” the team reports today in Current Biology . Notably, the flutterer made the gesture while facing her mate, not the birdhouse—which indicates she wasn’t merely pointing to the nest’s location, but rather conveying a message. Directing attention toward something of interest has been observed in other birds, including ravens, but symbolic gestures are considered more complex and hadn’t previously been confirmed in animals outside of primates.
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news