An unusual feature. Scientists find chicks fool female southern pied chatter

The study shows that as females mature, they begin to produce more offspring, but their cognitive abilities decline.

Southern pied chatter (Turdoides bicolor) are medium-sized black and white songbirds that inhabit the arid and semi-arid regions of the African savanna and the Kalahari Desert.

Representatives of this family prefer to live in groups and breed together. Curiously, each group consists of a dominant couple and a varying number of assistants. The dominant pair is known to produce about 95% of the group’s total offspring, with only 4% of secondary helpers coming from non-generic groups.

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In the new study, the scientists observed a population in the Kalahari Desert – the local population has been under researchers’ surveillance since 2003 and is therefore quite accustomed to the presence of humans. During the observations, the researchers tested wild birds with a variety of cognitive tasks, such as pecking a hatch or navigating around a barrier on the ground to get a food reward.

During the study, the scientists captured, tested and released several generations of birds to assess their cognitive abilities at different maturity stages. The study ran from 2018 to 2021 and included birds from 14 groups ranging from 2 to 7 individuals. For example:

  • In 2018, 13 people from 6 groups were tested;
  • In 2019, 18 people from 10 groups were tested;
  • In 2021, 7 people from 4 groups were tested.

The scientists then compared the results of the tests with the number of chicks produced by each of the females participating in the tests. The results were striking—the researchers found that all birds that did well on one cognitive task tended to do well on the other tests as well. However, it was surprising that cognitive functions peaked quite early in both sexes and decreased over time in women. Scientists have found that female southern calico baboons become more fertile as they age, but their cognitive abilities also decline.

University of Western Australia evolutionary biologist Kamaliya Soravia, lead author of the study, said after analyzing 10 years of data, researchers concluded that females with low cognitive abilities produce more chicks per year.

Scientists believe that cognitive abilities require high energy costs. To conserve energy, females seem to reduce their brain energy expenditure and increase it to produce and raise chicks. In addition, females expend a significant amount of energy competing with each other for reproductive rights.

Meanwhile, chatty men don’t need a lot of energy and therefore their cognitive functions don’t decline with age. More research is needed to understand how this selection works and what mechanism the process has, Soravia says.

Previously, Focus wrote that the world’s heaviest flying bird was self-medicating.

Source: Focus

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