Typically, male birds woo a female bird, and the female gets to choose her mate. Now, researchers have found that as the bird bobs, it does a quick tap dance where it stomps its feet (as seen in video, above).
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High-speed video cameras captured the previously unobserved rapid foot-tapping in a tiny finch with the catchy name “Blue-capped Cordon-bleu”.
They perform the routine while singing to their mates, a team from Japan and Germany discovered. The researchers studied about 16 blue-capped cordon-bleus, with eight male birds and eight female birds.
Courtship dances involve each bird holding a twig in its beak, head up high, while singing and bobbing up and down to drum out a rhythmical sound with its feet.
The new study, published today (Nov. 19) in the journal, is the first to observe the rapid tap dancing.
Citation: “Tap dancing birds: the multimodal mutual courtship display of males and females in a socially monogamous songbird”, Nao Ota, Manfred Gahr & Masayo Soma.
Considering that the limit of flicker fusion frequency is usually over 100Hz in many birds, stepping movements between 25 and 50Hz could be visible and function as a visual signal for cordon-bleus.
Blue-capped cordon-bleus not only sing to attract their potential mates, but they also perform fancy footwork.
“It’s a really rare phenomenon that songbirds produce non-vocal sounds”. The fact that both sexes of this socially monogamous songbird perform such a complex courtship display is a novel finding and suggests that the evolution of multimodal courtship display as an intersexual communication should be considered. The awesome courtship display of cordon-bleus had features that are analogous to courtship displays in manakins, particularly with regard to multimodality and acrobatic movementsbut these species differ in vocal learning ability, behavioural mutuality and mating systems.
“One possibility is that cordon-bleus are looking for best tap-dance performers, but according to our observation, there was no tendency that [a] particular male or female with more number of steps was popular among the other sex”, said Soma, adding that it was a bit puzzling. More specifically, they show that these animals perform quick movements that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
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Researchers also found that cordon-bleus execute about six steps at a time which decreases while they are singing.
