'Lovebirds' Sacrifice Food To Stick Together

Researchers at Oxford University found that wild birds would rather spend the winter months snuggled up next to their mates--even if it means sacrificing some food in the process.

"The choice to stay close to their partner over accessing food demonstrates how an individual bird's decisions in the short term, which might appear sub-optimal, can actually be shaped around gaining the long-term benefits of maintaining their key relationships. For instance, great tits require a partner to be able to reproduce and raise their chicks," Josh Firth, who led the study, said in a statement. "Therefore, even in wild animals, an individual's behavior can be governed by aiming to accommodate the needs of those they are socially attached to."

During the study, researchers at Oxford University's Wytham Woods used automated feeding stations to show the significance of social relationships between mated pairs of great tits, even when their relationships could hurt their ability to secure meals. During this time, the feedings stations helped determine which birds could and could not access food.

Birds could access the feeding stations based on radio frequency identification tags that referred to different feedings stations. However, the researchers fixed it so that mated pairs were unable to access the same feeders. 

"Some birds would get away with mainly going to their preferred feeder, and having its partner following it there," said Firth. "The flipside of this, of course, is that it means some birds pretty much spent all of their time at a feeder they were not allowed access to, just because its partner was going there."

Fortunately, many of the bird couples were also sneaky enough to manage some food out of the situation. For instance, the pairs cooperated in such a way that they managed to release the seed gate so that it stayed open for a couple of seconds at a time; this allowed for both partners to grab a bite before it closed.

The study is published in Current Biology.

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