cowbird

Cowbird nestlings need insect protein to survive and if a cowbird lays eggs in a goldfinch nest, that bird is doomed.

I think the implication is that cowbird behaviours are genetically and/or epigenetically encoded.

The reason that doesn't happen appears to be that cowbird parents and their offspring maintain a kind of distant relationship until maturity.

I'll be on NPR's Marketplace program tonight reading a version of the cowbird story linked above.

If your assuming they acquire this knowledge on the night of, how do you suppose the cowbird group accomplishes this over a few hours in the field?

I don’t see how a large group of 4 week old cowbirds can know what’s correct cowbird behaviour anymore than a single 4 week old.

Today, you see community-oriented startups like Cowbird have community managers as cofounders or first employees.

If you haven't done it yet, read about how the brown-headed cowbird "raises" its young!

But no, they did not "learn" the cowbird-specific behavior from any parents.

I think your reading of the article missed the point of their experiments that dissected the learning: Yes, the "learning from other-species foster parents" was affecting their non-cowbird type of behavior (e.g.

As the article notes: > "In laboratory experiments, cowbirds and other brood parasites that spend too much time with their foster families end up learning their host species’ songs, picking up their behaviors, and attempting to mate with them." Clearly, this would be an evolutionary dead end for the cowbird species as such mating attempts would be unlikely to result in viable offspring.

It feels like a cheat code and has also helped me fall in love with a visually mild bird, the Brown Cowbird.

Did you happen to know Cowbird(.com), by chance?

Cowbird is a rich-media story-telling website.