Birds are just as fashion-conscious as people

鸟类和人类一样注重时尚

1st February 2023| 552words

Humans are not the animal kingdom’s only fashionistas. Tits can be fashion victims, too, apparently. A study published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology by Sonja Wild and Lucy Aplin of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioural Biology, in Radolfzell, Germany, shows that, given the chance, they decorate their nests with this season’s must-have colour.

人类并不是动物王国唯一的时尚达人。显然，山雀也是时尚奴。德国拉多夫泽尔马克斯·普朗克行为生物学研究所的Sonja Wild和Lucy Aplin，在《行为生态学和社会生物学》上发表的一项研究表明，只要有机会，山雀就会用当季必备的颜色来装饰它们的巢穴。

Dr Wild and Dr Aplin were following up work published in 1934 by Henry Smith Williams, an American naturalist. He noticed that when he put various coloured balls of yarn out in his garden, almost always one and only one became popular that season for incorporation into local birds’ nests. But which particular hue was favoured varied from season to season. This suggested that the colour chosen by one of the early birds was spotted and copied by others.

Wild博士和Aplin博士正在跟进美国博物学家亨利·史密斯·威廉姆斯于1934年发表的研究。威廉姆斯注意到，当他把各种颜色的纱线球放在花园里时，几乎总会是有且只有一种颜色的纱线球，在那个季节被鸟类衔入当地的鸟巢中。但这些鸟偏爱哪种颜色则因季节而异。这表明，一只鸟最早选择筑巢的颜色被其他鸟类发现并模仿。

Williams’s work was, however, forgotten until Dr Wild and Dr Aplin came across it while following up on a different study, published in 2009 by a team at the University of Toulouse. This group noted that, during any given breeding season, the blue tits they were investigating tended to incorporate the same herbaceous plants into their nests regardless of how abundant those herbs actually were. This, too, suggested fashion-following—and it likewise led Dr Wild and Dr Aplin to speculate that birds were studying the nests of others and copying them. They therefore set out to re-run Williams’s experiment, but this time to collect some actual numbers.

然而，威廉姆斯的研究被遗忘了，直到Wild博士和Aplin博士在跟进图卢兹大学一个团队于2009年发表的另一项研究时才偶然发现了它。图卢兹大学的团队注意到，在任何给定的繁殖季节，他们所调查的蓝山雀倾向于将相同的草本植物筑进它们的巢中，而不管这些草本植物的种类实际上有多丰富。这也暗示了时尚的追随——这同样使Wild博士和Aplin博士推测，一些鸟类正在学习其他鸟类的巢穴并模仿它们。因此，他们开始重新进行威廉姆斯的实验，但这一次会收集一些实际的数据。

The birds they followed were part of a well-monitored population of blue, great and marsh tits in a wood near the institute. Most birds in this wood carry transponders fitted to them after their capture in mist nets. That allows the institute’s researchers to keep track of a vast number of individuals by logging their arrival at food dispensers scattered throughout the wood.

他们追踪研究的鸟，是研究所附近树林中蓝山雀、大山雀和沼泽山雀的一部分，它们受到严密的监控。研究人员用雾网捕获这片树林里的大多数鸟类后，都给它们安装了应答器。这使得研究所的研究人员，可以通过记录它们到达散布在树林里的食物分发器来跟踪大量的鸟类个体。

One day in March 2021 Dr Wild, Dr Aplin and their collaborators deployed five RFID-enabled dispensers loaded with wool rather than food. Each contained strands of two colours—either orange and pink or blue and purple—but all were rigged to dispense only one of these. This remained so until at least one local nest was seen to include wool from a dispenser. At that moment, the other colour was made available, too. As a control, Dr Wild and Dr Aplin set up, in a separate area, four further wool-dispensers, each of which provided two colours from the get-go.

2021年3月的一天，Wild博士、Aplin博士和他们的合作者，在树林里部署了五个启用RFID的分发器，这次里面装的是毛料而不是食物。每一个分发器都含有两种颜色的毛料——橙色和粉色，或者蓝色和紫色——但所有的分发器都只分配其中一种颜色。当至少看到有一个当地的巢穴中包括从分发器来的毛料时，那么只分发一种毛料的持续状态结束。就在这时，另一种颜色也可以从分发器获得。作为对照，Wild博士和Aplin博士在一个单独的区域设置了另外四个毛料分发器，每个分发器从一开始就提供两种颜色。

Of 68 tits’ nests built that season in the experimental areas, 26 included wool from a dispenser. Of these, 18 were constructed after both colours had become available from all dispensers. Even so, ten of that 18 included only the colour of wool first chosen by a nestbuilder. By contrast, all eight wool-bearing nests in the control zone contained a mixture of colours—a statistically significant difference.

在研究的当季，筑建在实验区的68个山雀巢中，有26个使用了从分发器中取来的毛料。其中，有18个鸟巢是在所有的分发器都能取到两种颜色的毛料之后筑建的。即便如此，这18个鸟巢中有10个只包含了筑巢者首先选择的毛料颜色。相比之下，控制区内所有8个包含毛料的鸟巢都是混合颜色的——这在统计上有显著差异。

Tits, then, do seem to be “on trend” when it comes to nest-building materials. Why that should happen remains obscure. Dr Wild and Dr Aplin suspect the trendsetters are older birds, and that evolution favours younger ones copying their elders since those elders have evidently survived what fortune has to throw at a tit. Williams’s original work, though, suggests such initial choices are arbitrary. A bit like those of the leaders of human fashions.

这么说来，在选择筑巢材料方面，山雀似乎确实是“潮流”。但为什么会发生这种情况仍不清楚。Wild博士和Aplin博士怀疑，引领潮流的是年长的鸟类，进化使年轻的鸟类倾向于去模仿他们的长辈，因为显然，这些年长的鸟儿在不知道有什么命运降临的时候存活了下来。然而，威廉姆斯原本的研究表明，这种最初的选择是随意的，有点像人类时尚的领导者。

词汇积累

fashionista

英 [ˌfæʃəˈniːstə]｜美 [ˌfæʃəˈnistə]

n. 〈非正式〉时尚达人

victim

英 ['vɪktɪm]｜美 [ˈvɪktɪm]

n. 受害者；牺牲品；罹难者；罹病者

nest

英 [nest]｜美 [nest]

n. 窝；鸟巢；巢穴；鸟窝

naturalist

英 ['nætʃ(ə)rəlɪst]｜美 [ˈnætʃ(ə)rəlɪst]

n. 博物学家

incorporation

英 [ɪnˌkɔːpə'reɪʃ(ə)n]

n. 结合；并入；公司注册

come across

遇见；碰撞；正好遇见

breeding

英 [ˈbriːdɪŋ]｜美 [ˈbridɪŋ]

n. 繁殖；教养；（为繁殖的）饲养

herbaceous

英 [hə(r)ˈbeɪʃəs]｜美 [ərˈbeɪʃəs]

adj. 草本植物的；草质；叶状的

regardless of

prep. 不管；不顾；不理会

speculate

英 [ˈspekjʊleɪt]｜美 [ˈspekjəˌleɪt]

v. 投机；推测；猜测；推断

transponder

英 [trænˈspɒndə(r)]｜美 [trænˈspɑndər]

n. 转发器；应答机；应答器

dispenser

英 [dɪˈspensə(r)]｜美 [dɪˈspensər]

n. 自动取款机；自动售货机；自动取物器

scatter

英 [ˈskætə(r)]｜美 [ˈskætər]

v. 撒；四散；驱散；撒播

deploy

英 [dɪ'plɔɪ]｜美 [dɪˈplɔɪ]

v. 部署；利用

separate

英 [ˈsep(ə)rət]｜美 [ˈsepərət]

adj. 单独的；独立的；分开的；不同的

when it comes to

一谈到；当提到；当谈到

obscure

英 [əbˈskjʊə(r)]｜美 [əbˈskjʊr]

adj. 无名的；鲜为人知的；费解的；难以理解的

trendsetter

英 [ˈtrendˌsetə(r)]｜美 [ˈtrendˌsetə(r)]

n. 引领潮流的人或物

arbitrary

英 [ˈɑː(r)bɪtrəri]｜美 [ˈɑrbɪˌtreri]

adj. 任意的；武断的；随心所欲的；专横的