Researchers have discovered that a unique African bird can trick other animals into giving up their food by mimicking the calls of other animals.
Native to southern Africa, the forked-tail drongo beguiles animals by giving off an alarm call used by other bird species, as well as meerkats, researchers told Reuters. The call is supposed to be a warning to other animals that predators are nearby. Afraid of being eaten, the other birds leave their food, allowing the drongo to swoop in and steal it.
"One could argue that the strategy of the drongo to steal food from others seems very dishonorable in human standards," evolutionary biologist Amanda Ridley, from the University of Western Australia, told Reuters. "But, yes, if it has found such a crafty way to catch food, which is usually much larger than the food items it catches itself, then we cannot help but admire this clever little bird's adaptiveness."
Ridley and her colleagues studied 64 drongos in South Africa's Kalahari Desert for over 800 hours. Most of the time, the birds gather their own food, catching insects while flying. But they turn into thieves when food is scarce.
"They're rather demonic little black birds with red eyes, a hooked beak and a forked tail," Tom Flower from the University of Cape Town told Reuters.
Other birds have grown to trust the drongos' calls because they have sounded the alarm in times of real danger. But the drongos don't always give a genuine call, and steal food when the other birds flee.
When the animals caught on to the false alarms, the drongo copied the alarm calls of some 50 other desert birds, including pied babblers, sociable weavers and pale chanting goshawks, Reuters reported.
"Because drongos give reliable predator information some of the time, it maintains host responsiveness (of other animals) since they can never know if the drongo is lying or telling the truth," Ridley told Reuters.
Drongos are able to consume a wider variety of food thanks to their tricks, including scorpions, geckos and beetle larvae.
"Crime pays," Flower told Reuters.
