Real friends, most people would agree, are there for each other. Sometimes that means offering emotional support. Sometimes this means that each other is moved. And if you are an excellent bullshit – a flamboyant, babble songbird from the African savannah – this means that bugs are filled in the throat of your friends’ descendants, safe in the expectation that they will eventually do the same for yours.
Scientists have known for a long time that social animals usually put blood relatives first. But for a study published Wednesday in the magazine NatureResearchers have dressed field data for two decades to show that not -related members of an excellent starling herd often help each other to eliminate chicks, to act in a behavior in a behavior that was not known before.
“We think these mutual helping relationships are a way to build up ties,” said Dustin Rubenstein, a professor of ecology at Columbia University and an author of the newspaper.
Superberde starlings are distinctive in animals that breed cooperative, said Alexis Earl, a biologist at Cornell University and an author of the newspaper. Their herds combine family groups with immigrants from other groups. New parents trust a maximum of 16 helpers, who bring extra food and help them fall predators.
The Laboratory of Dr. Rubenstein has retained a 20-year field study of the species with 40 breeding seasons. It has taken thousands of interactions between hundreds of chattering birds and collected DNA to investigate their genetic relationships. Then Dr. Earl, when a graduate student in the lab, started cracking the data, she and her colleagues were not shocked to see that Vogels largely helped family members, the way in which an aunt or uncle can penetrate to babysit and give parents a break.
But to their surprise, they discovered that Starlings also did not help -even when they helped family instead. Birds new at the herd helped the ones born in it, and vice versa. And because excellent starlings often switch between breeding and helping roles, the team discovered that individual birds that did not help had repeatedly repaid their good deeds one breeding season, sometimes repeatedly.
“The starlings consistently invest in the same preference social partners during their lives,” said Dr. Earl. “For me that sounds like friendship.”
The idea that animals can establish friendships with non -related individuals has caused controversy among scientists, said Gerald Carter, an animal gragging at Princeton University and an author on the newspaper. However, a growing number of research has led to scientists accepting that mutual relationships exist in the long term between primates, elephants, crows and whales. There are also vampire bats share those blood meals with non -related, hungry colonie membersand non-related, male Lansstaartmanakins serve as “Wingmen” for each other To get female attention.
But long -term relationships can be difficult to detect, Dr. Rubenstein. The team needed 27 seasons to collect hints from reciprocity in the starlings. He thinks they still underestimate it.
Such mutual helping relationships are probably more important than the data from the laboratory, Dr. Rubenstein. “And so you can only get a lot of data in the long term.”
The study makes a convincing matter, said Jorg Massen, a behavioral economist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands who was not involved in the newspaper. One step would be to find out how these long -term relationships are maintained from day to day.
“Is it only based on reproductive help, or is it accompanied by other behavioral characteristics?” he said.
The behavior of excellent starlings also suggests that maintaining these types of relationships with non -related fellows benefits everyone. “Birds that live in larger groups live the tendency to live longer, and they tend to reproduce more offspring during their lives,” said Dr. Rubenstein. In the hard and unpredictable African savanne it is all hands on deck to raise young. And the addition of immigrant birds is required to make the groups more resilient.
It has parallels with the evolutionary process of people – a pedigree of social, cooperative breeding Monkeys also fell on the savannahSaid Dr. Rubenstein.
And today, where many experts are worried about An epidemic of human lonelinessThere can be value when paying attention to the Superb Starling. In other words, strong relationships are often built up by offering help.
But maybe not offer bugs in the mouth of the children of your friends. Fortunately, you can always offer to babysit.
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