Scientist Had a Love Advice from Birds

Researchers tried to find the importance of monogamy and its impact on the success of the bird species called the zebra finch. They allowed 20 female zebra finches to choose between 20 males.

Not just humans but birds too fall in love and females choose mates if they find them stimulating in some way that is not necessarily obvious to an outside observer.

For the opposite half, nonetheless, the authors intervened like overbearing Victorian mother and father, splitting up the blissful pair, and forcibly pairing them with different damaged-hearted people.

“The mechanisms behind such behavioral compatibility”, researchers wrote, “in terms of willingness or ability to cooperate with certain individuals and in terms of coordination between partners need further study, in particular in the context of offspring provisioning”. The finches who chose their partners based on behavioral compatibility were less likely to shrug from their parental duties and had offspring which had the best chance of reaching adulthood.

The researchers were not surprised to notice that Zebra Finches that were allowed to choose their own partner had better reproductive success.

For more great nature science stories and general news, please visit our sister site, Headlines and Global News (HNGN). These tiny birds are monogamous for life, and share the burden of parental care.

Nests of those forced pairings had three times more unfertilized eggs that resulted in more buried or lost eggs and more chicks dying after hatching than those who are happily paired together.

Another similarity between these birds and humans is that female Zebra Finches aren’t all drawn to the same male Zebra Finch because of his superior genes. The birds have also demonstrated individualized preferences in what they look for in a mate, much like humans. Unlike other animal species where, say, the biggest horns or flashiest feathers get the girl, there’s no clear consensus on which male zebra finches represent the Brad Pitts of the aviary, as each individual female has her own checklist.

For the recent study, which was published on Monday in PLOS Biology, male and female zebra finches were put into a room so they can pair up with one another, according to The Washington Post. Even though the non-chosen males paid the same amount of attention to their mates as the chosen ones did, the non-chosen females weren’t as accepting with their partners and copulated less often. After the birds started to couple up, the researchers took half of the couples and split them apart.

As time progressed, the unchosen males wandered more and more; the unchosen females wandered less. When this happens, the males often strayed and had affairs, making the females more annoyed than ever. Yet, despite the insight the findings might provide when it comes to dating behavior, the researchers said the results may not accurately reflect human behavior in an arranged marriage. One third of the birds were left in their already formed pairs from the first breeding season.