According to a recent study published in the Behavioral Ecology and Socio-biology journal, scientists have found that same sex pairs of Zebra Finches sang to and preened each other, much like pairs of the opposite sex. Zebra Finches are very colorful and vocal birds, which sing to their mates, which is believed to strengthen the pair's bond. They are highly social and establish life-long relationships. Pairs share nests and preen each other often. Julie Elie, the lead researcher from the University of California Berkeley is interested in the zebra finches' behavior because it reflects the complexity of animal relationships and behaviors. “Relationships in animals can be more complicated than just a male and a female who meet and reproduce, even in birds,” Elie stated. “I'm interested in how animals establish relationships and how [they] use acoustic communication in their social interactions,” she told BBC Nature. “My observations of [them] led me to this surprising result: same-sex individuals would also interact in affiliative manners, like male-female pairs.” Elie and her colleagues, Clementine Vignai and Nicolas Mathevon from the University of Saint-Etienne, raised young finches in same sex groups. The result was that more than half of the finches paired up with another finch of the same sex and were monitored for signs that they had bonded fully. Bonded birds were found to perch side by side, nesting together and also greeted each other by rubbing their beaks. The next stage of the experiment was to introduce new females to a group of eight bonded male pairs. Of the eight, five ignored the females completely and interacted exclusively with their male partners. What is speculated from these findings is that perhaps the drive to find a mate is a lot more complex than the need to reproduce. According to Elie, “a pair-bond in socially monogamous species represents a cooperative partnership that may give advantages for survival… Finding a social partner, whatever its sex, could be a priority.” Interestingly, same-sex pairing is not uncommon in birds. Elie mentions the example of monogamous gulls and albatrosses, where females pair-bond giving them the chance to breed without a male partner. “Female partners copulate with a paired male then rear the young together,” Elie explained. Manhattan's Central Park Zoo has two penguins in captivity named Roy and Silo. For at least a full year, both male chinstrap penguins bonded with each other and showed no interest in the female population within their enclosure. The penguins built a nest together and hatched a fertilized egg given to them by one of their keepers. In the wild, once a female lays an egg, it is normal for the females to go hunt for food whilst the male penguins incubate the eggs, waiting for the females to return with food. ** Bikyamasr.com does not condone animal experiments. BM
