I see a scientist using a red band tag first and later in the video a silver-blue one for a different bird. Do they control for tag color when banding birds? https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(15)... some birds are known for their color/visual preferences and the measurement could ostensibly be a cause for the results: a confounding variable like in those mice studies where male or female scent inadvertently affected rat behaviour.
I suspect that it would be quite difficult to control for that, since my understanding is that they specifically use different color combos on each bird in a specific area. This lets the scientists easily ID the bird by sight or in a photo, vs. all silver bands with a stamped code. The latter would require them to re-catch the bird to ID it, defeating the purpose of observing behavior and IDing individuals as it happens. I would also guess that it isn’t really a factor in the birds’ behavior, though.
Yeah, I think this is 100% it but I’m not aware of any standards. I have spent a bit of time watching wildlife ecologists do bird banding at one site and they had a log of all the rings, so they could identify them by sight. Because there are limited color combinations, they segmented by species, sex for some species to make it easier. Common CS algorithms show up everywhere in the real world :)
I wonder if different ecology/conservation groups coordinate their algorithms and databases.
I participated once, but oh my god was it terrifying. The care with which one needs to remove the bird from the net and handle it is unnerving, especially with tiny songbirds. Weighing them is really cute. Massive respect for people who do it day in and day out.
Since we are talking bird and mating rituals, HN member once pointed out to me the fascinating bowerbird mating rituals[1] that result in them building fairly ornate structures showcasing their resource gathering skills.
It seems, to me, a similar dynamic to human pairings (at the edges). The more dominate aggressive females go for the more nurturing males, and vice versa. Then you're left with having pairings of dominate types who fight like 'cats & dogs', and never really know much about the more subdued pairings.
One can certainly point to human pairings like this, but I don’t know of any studies that show it as a general trend or tendency. One can also point to power couples and quiet couples just as easily.
We can't expect studies to be possible with topics like this in the near future. As I mentioned in my other comments, we don't even have cultural concepts or language to capture this in a meaningful way, not alone some kind of objective test that could form the basis of a scientific study.
They could only do it in this bird because of the striking visual difference, and without it they wouldn't have been able to study this at all.
I think it can be observed firsthand if you have experience dating a lot of different people, and the dynamic becomes quite obvious... but you could not easily categorize a person that you haven't known sexually or romantically in this way. It's quite striking the intense 'chemistry' when you are paired with someone that is on the complementary end of this spectrum from you, and the lack of it when you are not.
I think words like "power couples" and "quiet couples" are looking at something different are are themselves not even opposites- I think you are looking at something like ambition/goal directedness, and introversion.
> we don't even have cultural concepts or language to capture this in a meaningful way
I was thinking the dynamic from these birds shows a more "hidden" model of relationships how I have witnessed and experienced. Obviously there is no "one way", but like the birds, the majority, that I am around, fall into this pattern. Language is such a limiting factor here. By dominate aggressive females or nurturing males, it is not meant in the females emasculating males way that the phrase could be taken in English culture. As with the birds, being the nurturing male never meant the weak male. The nurturing males simply adapted to their strengths and nested in dense forest and sang their songs in a lower pitch so it farther. It doesn't mean they were less than, they still got mates. They are very attractive to both aggressive and nurturing females, but the more aggressive females are going to go after what they want when they want more often than the more subdued females.
To bring it into one of many human examples I personally have decades of witnessing, is an aunt & uncle who would be considered the "power couple" of the family.
Wealth, education, status, all far outshines the rest of the extended family. But depending on when you witness them, they would be classed power couple, conservative-traditional couple, or egalitarian/50-50 type. At one point, both high powered careers, the female with the higher position (multinational financial VP type). Eventually she decides to take care of the house and he continues working raking in good money. At no point in time would anyone who knows them, ever in their right mind, call her nurturing and him dominate. If boundaries needed to be made with family, friends, brokers whoever she was on it and it was no-nonsense. You could find him tending to their garden, or chatting it up with neighbors in the mean time. There was nothing emasculating about it. And if I had to make a guess about which of the family couples that have been married 40+ years still has the sex life one could only dream of when they reach their late 60-70's - its them.
I agree- humans have almost exactly the same dynamic. Our language doesn’t even have accurate words for it because it is culturally unacceptable to be a more (submissive? feminine?) man or a more (dominant? masculine?) woman yet it’s actually quite common and despite stereotypes it is a totally separate thing from gender or sexual orientation. The “wrong” pairings rarely work out in relationships.
I believe many cultures and languages are more consciously aware of this- for example the Chinese concept of yin and yang being important in dating and relationships.
Huh this is news to me. My field guides all mention the color variation but don’t mention differing behavior. One guide even incorrectly says its based on age (it is worth noting they do vary in plumage depending on age, but in a different way).
Another bird that is sort of like how they describe in the article is the Ruff. It is a beautiful type of sandpiper where males are split into 3 categories with different appearance and behavior.
Anyone know what types of chicks result from tan-striped/tan-striped couplings? Are they a mixture of white-striped and tan-striped? Or are they all tan-striped? And likewise for white-stripe/white-stripe couplings? The article says the single-striped couplings are rare in nature, but I'm wondering none-the-less.
John James Audubon was a white supremacist and purchased several human beings. I worry that we are in danger of a return to scientific racism with the renewed interest in eugenics.
Readit News
I wonder if different ecology/conservation groups coordinate their algorithms and databases.
I participated once, but oh my god was it terrifying. The care with which one needs to remove the bird from the net and handle it is unnerving, especially with tiny songbirds. Weighing them is really cute. Massive respect for people who do it day in and day out.
[1]https://blog.nature.org/2021/01/04/bowerbirds-meet-the-bird-...
Went down a bit of a bower-hole there!
The golden bower birds are incredible but they are all super interesting.
They could only do it in this bird because of the striking visual difference, and without it they wouldn't have been able to study this at all.
I think it can be observed firsthand if you have experience dating a lot of different people, and the dynamic becomes quite obvious... but you could not easily categorize a person that you haven't known sexually or romantically in this way. It's quite striking the intense 'chemistry' when you are paired with someone that is on the complementary end of this spectrum from you, and the lack of it when you are not.
I think words like "power couples" and "quiet couples" are looking at something different are are themselves not even opposites- I think you are looking at something like ambition/goal directedness, and introversion.
> we don't even have cultural concepts or language to capture this in a meaningful way
I was thinking the dynamic from these birds shows a more "hidden" model of relationships how I have witnessed and experienced. Obviously there is no "one way", but like the birds, the majority, that I am around, fall into this pattern. Language is such a limiting factor here. By dominate aggressive females or nurturing males, it is not meant in the females emasculating males way that the phrase could be taken in English culture. As with the birds, being the nurturing male never meant the weak male. The nurturing males simply adapted to their strengths and nested in dense forest and sang their songs in a lower pitch so it farther. It doesn't mean they were less than, they still got mates. They are very attractive to both aggressive and nurturing females, but the more aggressive females are going to go after what they want when they want more often than the more subdued females.
To bring it into one of many human examples I personally have decades of witnessing, is an aunt & uncle who would be considered the "power couple" of the family.
Wealth, education, status, all far outshines the rest of the extended family. But depending on when you witness them, they would be classed power couple, conservative-traditional couple, or egalitarian/50-50 type. At one point, both high powered careers, the female with the higher position (multinational financial VP type). Eventually she decides to take care of the house and he continues working raking in good money. At no point in time would anyone who knows them, ever in their right mind, call her nurturing and him dominate. If boundaries needed to be made with family, friends, brokers whoever she was on it and it was no-nonsense. You could find him tending to their garden, or chatting it up with neighbors in the mean time. There was nothing emasculating about it. And if I had to make a guess about which of the family couples that have been married 40+ years still has the sex life one could only dream of when they reach their late 60-70's - its them.
I believe many cultures and languages are more consciously aware of this- for example the Chinese concept of yin and yang being important in dating and relationships.
Another bird that is sort of like how they describe in the article is the Ruff. It is a beautiful type of sandpiper where males are split into 3 categories with different appearance and behavior.