Female Bowerbird Has a Complex Sex Life
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
In the search for sex, young female bowerbirds prefer blue, while their older sisters go for flamboyant strutting and loud squawks, scientists reported Wednesday. This indicates male bowerbirds have to know how to decorate with blue in addition to doing the courtship dance, so they have a chance to mate as much as possible, the researchers wrote in the journal Nature.
“We show experimentally that females in a population may choose males for different reasons. This, in turn, explains why males have complex displays -- that is to accommodate the different mating preferences of females they engage in courtship,” said ornithologist Gerald Borgia of the University of Maryland.
