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Bower Birds Galore
From a recent episode of Nova, I learned about the Bower Bird, a little Australian fellow who builds complex structures to impress his lady friends. These can be a "mat" surrounded by meticulously arranged "treasures" - flowers, beetle shells, pretty stones, milk bottle caps, etc., a "maypole" - a large dirt or moss structure adorned with pretty objects, or an "avenue", a two-walled structure with the treasures strewn about.
Naturally, scientists have built a robotic bower bird to study mating patterns. The robots are very cute.
From this page on Satin Bower Birds:
What the Bower Bird Likes to do in its Spare Time
Hide/display/titivate, or just lounge around the bower with a six-pack.
Bower birds do like : bowers, trees, food, sex, moonlight
Bower birds do not like : cats, long weekends, mobile phones, nuclear tests
June 21, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
Ooooh, I totally saw a thing on Bower birds like a year ago on that show with the British guy on PBS (yeah, really narrowing it down there...David Attenborough I think?)
The birds all have totally unique styles of bowers. Some go for texture, while others use color (there was one that amassed a huge collection of pink objects that were all somehow almost the EXACT same shade). I seem to remember the show mentioning that no one's ever actually caught the bird mating, althought I could be thinking of another bird, plus maybe the show was old.
Posted by: brady at Jun 22, 2005 10:23:51 AM
David Attenborough's soothing, well-modulated voice always tells you that you're about to learn something really neat about nature. This was indeed his special on the bower bird, and he obviously really enjoyed it. I'm thinking they built the robots to try to catch the birds mating. That, or the birds are clunkies.
Posted by: unsinn at Jun 22, 2005 1:48:46 PM
Yeah, there was one who liked blue things, and all of his stuff was manmade, and exactly the same color blue: plastic silverware, bottlecaps, stuff like that. I was also impressed with the ones who collect stuff like scarab beetle shells and rare tiny fungi.
Posted by: R. at Jun 22, 2005 7:23:57 PM
Yeah, there was one who liked blue things, and all of his stuff was manmade, and exactly the same color blue: plastic silverware, bottlecaps, stuff like that. I was also impressed with the ones who collect stuff like scarab beetle shells and rare tiny fungi.
Posted by: R. at Jun 22, 2005 7:43:37 PM
