KATHMANDU — On an early spring morning in the western forests of Chitwan National Park in Nepal, a cacophony of birdsongs resonates through the air, mingling with the rustling of dried leaves and cries of other animals in the distance. As the sun’s rays penetrate the thick canopy, a feathered creature adorned with a dark arc looping across its breast and a striped white patch on its cheek serenades with a sequence of whistles that sound like laughter. A short distance away, a smaller bird, mostly brown with hints of rust on its neck and sides, and a conspicuous black pattern on its white chest, composes a tuneful and melodious call. In the shade of the bushes, the two birds appear similar. But they’re anything but. The two birds — the greater necklaced laughingthrush Pterorhinus pectoralis) and the lesser necklaced laughingthrush (Garrulax monileger) — don’t even belong to the same genus, despite their names and their strikingly similar visual features. A new study looking at the interactions between the two species, which are found across South and East Asia, suggests that the smaller of the laughingthrushes may have adopted mimicry of the bigger bird as an evolutionary strategy to potentially placate the greater laughingthrush when it’s around, gain some level of protection against predators, and get better access to food by foraging near the larger bird. Sunset at a forest in Chitwan National Park. The two birds observed in the study are often found in dimly-lit conditions. Image by Abhaya…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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