Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff a production of I Heart Radio, Hey,
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lorn vogel bomb here. When you see adorable
Speaker 1: little birds snacking on seeds at your bird feeder, or
Speaker 1: flitting about like they're about to so a dress for Cinderella,
Speaker 1: don't be fooled. Those birds will gang up and turn
Speaker 1: on you in a tiny, fluttering heartbeat. When birds detect
Speaker 1: a predator, they will start mobbing it. Mobbing here is
Speaker 1: when small birds join together to fend off a larger bird,
Speaker 1: the small and large being relative terms. Here. Crows will
Speaker 1: band together to mob a hawk, and starlings will come
Speaker 1: together to mob a crow. Say, a bird or maybe
Speaker 1: a pair of birds, is near their nest of eggs
Speaker 1: or hatchlings. When they spy a predator. It could be
Speaker 1: an owl, or a cat, or even a human. The
Speaker 1: little bird will let out a call of alarm that
Speaker 1: alerts its squad. The squad arrives, and they physically mob
Speaker 1: the predator. Sometimes birds join the mob not because they
Speaker 1: heard the call, but because they saw other birds headed
Speaker 1: for a mob. As studies have documented going back to
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, the birds have an arsenal of moves
Speaker 1: at their disposal they can hop and flap in the
Speaker 1: predator's face, they can dive bombit. They can even shove
Speaker 1: it around a bit if they're feeling brave, and some
Speaker 1: birds go for the full gross out factor by pooping
Speaker 1: or puking on the predator while they're mobbing it. They aim,
Speaker 1: and they can be very precise about it. Though. While
Speaker 1: this is gross to us, who knows what hawks think
Speaker 1: is disgusting, But all that wet globby stuff serves a
Speaker 1: practical purpose too. It's sticky weight can ground the larger bird. Also,
Speaker 1: hummingbirds in a nine study showed that they're quite aware
Speaker 1: of their needle like beaks. They zoom in towards a
Speaker 1: predator and faint poking at its eyeballs. If that doesn't
Speaker 1: make an owl flinch, nothing will. So how can you
Speaker 1: recognize a mob? No matter what good feathers taught us,
Speaker 1: the signs of a made bird aren't the same as
Speaker 1: a made man. But it can still be pretty easy
Speaker 1: to catch a bird mob happening. Often you'll see and
Speaker 1: hear a lot of excited birds in a tree. They're
Speaker 1: screaming and flapping and making a huge ruckus. There might
Speaker 1: even be a half dozen different species taking part. It's
Speaker 1: very likely that there's a predator in the tree and
Speaker 1: those birds are mobbing it. If the predator doesn't get
Speaker 1: annoyed enough to leave, like maybe it's a taxidermy owl
Speaker 1: being used in an experiment, the mobbing birds can keep
Speaker 1: it up for hours. It will likely come as no
Speaker 1: surprise that crows are the biggest fans of mobbing other birds.
Speaker 1: They love to use this technique, and they are loud
Speaker 1: about it. If you have crows in your neighborhood, you
Speaker 1: have almost certainly experienced the sheer joy of a tree
Speaker 1: laden with black crows screaming their heads off for far
Speaker 1: longer than they could possibly need to. Mobbing achieves three
Speaker 1: things For smaller birds, it can scare or annoy the
Speaker 1: predator enough that it moves on. The mobbing birds can
Speaker 1: make enough of a distraction that the predator won't be
Speaker 1: able to find the nest that they're probably looking for.
Speaker 1: And it can tell all the other animals around that
Speaker 1: there's a predator in the area, thus ruining the predator's
Speaker 1: surprise factor. Plus in researchers found yet another reason for
Speaker 1: birds to mob showing off for the ladies. According to
Speaker 1: a paper published in behavioral ecology and sociobiology. Male birds
Speaker 1: will mob less threatening predators more aggressively if there are
Speaker 1: female birds around to watch, and so if the threat
Speaker 1: of danger is actually pretty low, the males will be
Speaker 1: particularly daring so the females can see what a great
Speaker 1: mate did be. If the predator is more dangerous, though,
Speaker 1: the males show off less and merely get the mobbing
Speaker 1: job done. Today's episode was written by Kristen Hall Geisler
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clang. For more in the so
Speaker 1: lots of other topics because it how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is a production of I heart Radio. For
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