Credit: Alex Maisey, University of Wollongong
Ithaca, NY Famous for their uncanny ability to imitate other birds and even mechanical devices, researchers find that Australia s Superb Lyrebird also uses that skill in a totally unexpected way. Lyrebirds imitate the panicked alarm calls of a mixed-species flock of birds while males are courting and even while mating with a female. These findings are published in the journal
Current Biology. The male Superb Lyrebird creates a remarkable acoustic illusion, says Anastasia Dalziell, currently a Cornell Lab of Ornithology Associate and recent Cornell Lab Rose Postdoctoral Fellow, now at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Birds gather in mobbing flocks and the ruckus they make is a potent cue of a predator nearby. The lyrebird recreates that sound when a potential mate tries to leave a displaying male without copulating, or during copulation itself. These two moments are key to male reproductive success, suggesting that mimicking
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VIDEO: This video shows a male superb lyrebird mimicking a mobbing flock after an inspecting female leaves the male s display mound without copulating view more
Credit: Dalziell et al.
When birds see a predator in their midst, one defensive strategy is to call out loudly, attracting other birds of the same or different species to do the same. Sometimes individuals within this mobbing flock will fly over or at the predator or attack it directly. Now, researchers reporting in the journal
Current Biology on February 25 have found that male superb lyrebirds do something rather unexpected: they imitate a mobbing flock in courtship and even in the act of mating with a female.
Male lyrebirds snare mates with ‘acoustic illusion’
February 25, 2021
Already famous for its uncanny ability to imitate other birds and mechanical devices, Australia’s superb lyrebird can also imitate the panicked alarm calls of a mixed-species flock of birds while males are courting or even mating, a team including a Cornell researcher has found.
“The male superb lyrebird creates a remarkable acoustic illusion,” said Anastasia Dalziell, a Cornell Lab of Ornithology associate and recent Lab Rose Postdoctoral Fellow, now at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and first author of “Male Lyrebirds Create an Acoustic Illusion of a Mobbing Flock During Courtship and Copulation,” published Feb. 25 in Current Biology.