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Thanks CTOnews.com netizen Hua Ke high achiever's clue delivery! This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Rhododendron is a kind of birds widely distributed all over the world. They have a special way of breeding, that is, they lay their eggs in the nests of other birds and let other birds hatch and raise them. Cuckoos haven't seen their biological parents since birth, so how did they learn this skill?

/ tr. by Helen Pilcher (Helen Pilcher)

Translation | Happy

Editor | Chen Qiang

The original article is published in Science focus, No. 10, 2023.

The cuckoo can be called a master of fishing in troubled waters. Female cuckoos lay eggs in the nests of other birds and then abandon their offspring to the care of other birds. When the cuckoo's chicks hatch, it pushes other eggs or chicks out of the nest and pretends to be their own children, deceiving adoptive parents into feeding more food. In this way, other birds raised cuckoo chicks as their own children. This survival strategy is called "nest parasite", and the idiom "dove occupies a magpie's nest" describes this phenomenon.

Why did the cuckoo choose the strategy of nest parasitism? For cuckoos, nest parasitism can save time and energy. Instead of building their own nests or taking care of their offspring, cuckoos just need to find the right host bird at the right time and secretly lay eggs when the host bird is not looking. In this way, cuckoos can devote more time and energy to foraging and laying more eggs. For example, the rhododendron can lay more than 20 eggs in a breeding season, making it one of the most egg-laying birds in nature. However, instead of laying their eggs in the nests of the same host bird, they are scattered to the nests of different host birds, each laying only one egg.

The host bird does not sit back and wait for death, but also has its own counterstrategy. On the one hand, host birds prevent cuckoos from entering their nests to lay eggs by protecting their territory, concealing their nests and concealing their eggs. On the other hand, the host bird will deal with the nest parasitism of rhododendron by identifying and eliminating rhododendron eggs, or abandoning nests and rebuilding new nests.

These countermeasures are formed by the co-evolution of the host bird and the cuckoo. Moreover, after co-evolution, the size, color and markings of rhododendron eggs are highly similar to those of host birds. As a result, birds that lay blue eggs are parasitized by cuckoos that lay blue eggs, and birds that lay white eggs are parasitized by cuckoos that lay white eggs.

Nest parasitism is an instinctive behavior engraved on genes. One problem is that cuckoo chicks have never met their biological parents. How do they learn this strategy?

Animal behavior is affected by both acquired and innate factors, but in the case of cuckoos, heredity plays the most important role. Scientists believe that nest parasitism is related to a variety of genes, and cuckoos transmit these genes to achieve nest parasitism from generation to generation. So it is the genes that determine the way cuckoos reproduce (these genes also affect the cuckoo's preference for host birds), and then successful reproduction always allows the genes to be passed on steadily to offspring.

You can say that the cuckoo is inherently evil, but it can also be less moral: it is just a beautiful and successful bird with an unusual way of life that has been tested for millions of years. In short, we should look at cuckoos from a scientific point of view, rather than judging them by human moral standards.

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