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.

Voyeuristic Birds - Masayo Soma
Voyeuristic Birds - Masayo Soma
Voyeuristic Birds - Masayo Soma Voyeuristic Birds - Masayo Soma
{{svg_share_icon}}
Click bottom of waveform to add your comments


 

Websites and other resources

News and Media

phys.org | Science Daily | Cosmos | National Geographic Kids | Asian Scientist

 

Bonus Clips

Patrons of Parsing Science gain exclusive access to bonus clips from all our episodes and can also download mp3s of every individual episode.

Support us for as little as $1 per month at Patreon. Cancel anytime.

 

🔊 Patrons can access bonus content here.


We’re not a registered tax-exempt organization, so unfortunately gifts aren’t tax deductible.

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!