Romantic Jays Take Care To Feed Their Mates What They Particularly Crave
Jay Couple courtesy Cambridge UniversityIn advance of Valentine's Day, a new study finds sweet behavior in bird couples. Cambridge researchers took pairs of mated jaybirds and put them in adjoining compartments, so that the male could see what the female was doing through a window. They then fed the female a meal of delicious larvae of one particular kind -- either all waxmoth larvae or all mealworm larvae, while her partner looked on. The bird couple was then reunited, and the male took up its usual role of feeding snacks to the female. The male, given a choice of the two different types of larvae, chose to feed his lady the type that she hadn't just been eating a lot of, since female jays enjoy a bit of variety in their worms. If the male hadn't been watching the female, he fed her whichever larva he felt like; and likewise if he...