Birds use ‘after you’ gesture at the nest

Researchers have revealed the use of symbolic gestures for communication between partners in Japanese Tit.

The work further challenges the idea that only humans and primates use gestural signals to convey their messages, after relatively recent studies of ravens, fish and other animals showed that they can use gestures to point to objects of interest.

Toshitaka Suzuki, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, led the research. In addition to Norimasa Sugita, he followed eight breeding pairs of Japanese tits, recording 320 nest visits. Their careful observations revealed that the fluttering of the wings prompted the other member of the pair to enter the nest first, if they both arrived at the same time.

Symbolic gestures require complex cognitive skills. Female Japanese tits were shown to signal to their mates to enter the nest first (Greg Peterson via Wikimedia Commons).

The researchers compared this to the human “after you” gesture, which sends a message to the partner bird to enter the tree cavity first.

This visual communication, shown by females, contributes to the birds’ complex array of specific calls. Because it is performed only in the presence of a partner and prompts them to enter the nest without physical contact, Suzuki says it is an example of intentional communication between partners, and more complex than a simple signal to an object of interest.

When the female was not flapping her wings, she tended to enter the nest before the male.

The ‘after you’ wing flapping of the Japanese chickadee is an example of symbolic gestures, which require complex cognitive skills.

Suzuki said: “For more than 17 years I have been studying these fascinating birds. They not only use specific calls to convey certain meanings, but also combine different calls into sentences using syntactic rules.

“These diverse vocalizations led me to initiate this research into their potential use of physical gestures.”

He added: ‘There is a hypothesis that walking on two legs allows humans to adopt an upright posture, freeing their hands for greater mobility, which in turn contributed to the evolution of gestures. free, which we believe can facilitate the development of gestural communication.

“We will continue to decipher what birds are talking about through gestures, vocalizations and their combinations. This endeavor not only allows us to explore the rich world of animal languages, but also serves as a crucial key to unraveling the origins and evolution of our own languages. language.”

Reference

Suzuki, TN, and Sugita, N. 2024. The ‘after you’ gesture in a bird. Current biology, 34(6), R231. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.030