Could birds’ courting behaviors change when they’re being watched? In episode 42, Masayo Soma from Hokkaido University discusses her research into monogamous songbirds which intensify their singing and dancing during courtship rituals – but only while in the presence of an audience of other birds. Her open-access article “Couples showing off: Audience promotes both male and female multimodal courtship display in a songbird,” coauthored with Nao Ota and Manfred Gahr, was published on October 3, 2018 in the journal Science Advances.
Websites and other resources
News and Media
phys.org | Science Daily | Cosmos | National Geographic Kids | Asian Scientist
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Hosts / Producers
Ryan Watkins & Doug Leigh
How to Cite
Watkins, R., Leigh, D., & Soma, M.. (2019, February 5). Parsing Science – Voyeuristic Birds. figshare. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7743758
Music
What’s The Angle? by Shane Ivers
Transcript
Coming soon!