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Male lyre birds in the throes of sexual union will mimic the sound of a distressed crowd of other birds to trick their mate and prevent them from escaping, new research from Australia shows.
The remarkable discovery was made after audio and video analysis of stunning lyre birds – a species known for its extravagant dance routines and ability to mimic the calls of more than 20 other species.
The researchers found that males could simultaneously reproduce the vocal “mobbing” sounds and wing-flapping sounds produced by other species of birds when trying to scare off a predator.
The mimicry of male lyrebirds is so accurate that it not only fools the female lyrebird, but reading experiments also revealed that other small birds had been tricked into thinking there was a threat to proximity.
Captive lyrebirds are known to mimic other sounds, including chainsaws and car alarms.
Dr Anastasia Dalziell, behavioral ecologist at the University of Wollongong, led the research published in the journal Current Biology.
“Male lyrebirds are capable of doing amazing things and terrible things,” she says.
Dalziell first heard lyre birds mimic bullying calls in 2007 and then studied the ability in detail in two populations – one in the Sherbrooke Forest in Victoria, the other in the Blue Mountains in Nova Scotia. -South Wales. These locations are 700 km away.
Along with her colleagues, she was sure the imitation had something to do with mating, but she wasn’t immediately sure why.
But other scientists have pointed to similar behavior in other animals. Male topi antelopes use a false alarm call if females stray from their “display arenas”.
The male European European Corn Borer butterfly mimics the sound of predatory bats long enough to freeze a female, giving the male time to mate.
“The Lyrebirds use the same strategy, but do it in a really exaggerated way, as the Lyrebirds seem to do,” said Dalziell.
Research found that lyre birds only reproduced sound when they attracted a female to their “show area” – a small space in the forest, cleared for the yard – or when they copulated.
Both of these moments, says Dalziell, are crucial to reproductive success “suggesting that imitation of a mobbing herd is crucial sexual behavior for males.”
She said they were even more convinced when their camera footage showed female lyrebirds reacting to mimicking calls and returning to exhibition areas.
When the mimic calls were analyzed in detail, the researchers were able to detect harassing calls that looked like eastern yellowbirds, brown thorns, and white-browed scrub. Sometimes researchers have detected alarm calls that looked like two species of opossum.
To compare the imitated mobbing chorus to a real one, Dalzielle said they had to use their own deceptive behavior to get local birds to mimic the calls.
“We threw a rubber snake,” she said.
Male lyre birds have always used their deceitful trick if the females tried to escape during mating, Dalziell said.
“The males do everything in their power to ensure that the female mates. This is just one of the many things men do.
“They have this great dance routine and they’ll be singing from dawn to dusk and so the female gets all these other great signals. We shouldn’t see lyre birds as terrible.
“We have a tendency to romance about lyre birds, but they are animals and are capable of amazing things. But they also do things that we don’t like or find disturbing and problematic, just like people.
Lyrebirds will regularly mimic other species and Dalziell said their repertoire spans over 20 different species.
“They only mimic local species. They do this mostly during the breeding season and it’s part of their dawn chorus – and it’s very, very precise.
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