Did You Know That Ugly Birds Have Heavenly Voices?

Artwork by Incrediville

“Caw caw, we should totally bang”⁠ •⁠ 🎨 by @incrediville⁠ ⁠ After doing research on more than 500 birds, a team from Oxford University has discovered the next voice of birds. Pretty male birds like the Mandarin Duck have monotonous vocals, whereas plain-looking birds like the nightingale have the most beautiful voices. What?⁠ ⁠ This isn’t a coincidence. It all takes us back to the animal behavior of sexual selection. It’s a tough game out there for the animals trying to date because there are just too many boys! So you gotta stand out with all you got, whether it’s the looks, the feathers, the body, or even the voice.⁠ ⁠ The world is fair if you start to think about it. If you got the looks, then no voice for you, and vice versa. You can’t have both! You gotta focus on your talent, your gift, and ultimately, what makes you special. Because hey, peacocks are the real pretty boys that you don’t wanna hear sing. They still get laid though.⁠

Usually, animals are very attracted to what can be seen. Visual cues are common and have always been a big part of the sexual selection process. (Peacocks are the perfect example) What’s interesting with this study is the realization that sound qualities can also be appealing. Looks aren’t everything.

The word “dichromatism” describes the different kinds of coloring in animal species. Technically, the less difference there is between the male and female bird, the better the signing.

SOURCES:

[embed]Multi-modal signal evolution in birds: re-examining a standard proxy for sexual selection - PubMed Sexual selection is proposed to be an important driver of speciation and phenotypic diversification in animal systems…pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

[embed]Male birds can be good singers or good looking, but not both The call of a male peacock is no pleasure to listen to, but its splendid tail means it doesn't matter. Now an analysis…www.newscientist.com