winforbet gaming These Architects Embrace Local Styles. And They Fly to Work, Too.

Birds can be picky building their nests. They experiment with materialswinforbet gaming, waffle over which twig to use, take them apart and start again. It’s a complex, fiddly process that can seem to reflect careful thought.

“It’s so fascinating,” Maria Tello-Ramos, a behavioral ecologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said. “But it hasn’t been studied much at all.”

New research led by Dr. Tello-Ramos, published on Thursday in the journal Science, provides the first evidence that groups of birds that build their homes together learn to follow consistent architectural styles, distinct from groups just a few dozen feet away.

The finding upends longstanding assumptions that nest building is an innate behavior based on the birds’ environment and adds to a growing list of behaviors that make up bird culture.

Advertisement

As important for survival as nest building is, scientists know relatively little about it. Most of what is known about bird nests has come from studying their role in reproductive success, focusing on their usefulness in protecting birds and eggs from cold, wind and predators.

“The focus has been on the structure, not the behavior that built it,” Dr. Tello-Ramos said. She said she found that surprising because nest building is one of the rare behaviors that has a tangible product, something that can be measured and provide insight into why birds behave the way they do.

Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.winforbet gaming

• winforbet gaming
• local
• These
• embrace
• Architects