Birds with the Best Avian Attire

On the eastern half of New Guinea and various other locations including eastern Indonesia and eastern Australia, there contains the bird family of Paradisaeidae. This bird family contains several genera (which then contain many species) of extremely unique-looking birds. And I’m not just talking about their color or chirp, these birds are wacky.

Fashionable Feathers

Upon first glance at these birds, you might notice a few generic-looking birds in the mix. Surprisingly, these are the female Birds of Paradise.

This is called sexual dimorphism, which put simply, is when sexes of the same species exhibit different traits from each other. A well-known example of this is the presence of a mane on a lion, we know the males have manes and the females do not.

Birds of Paradise work the same way, the males are the ones with the cooky features while the females remain generic looking. These elaborate designs in these male birds serve one purpose: to impress a female mate.

All's Fair in Lek and War

While many are familiar with the act of males competing with each other to earn a female mate, many don’t know that is it called lekking.

The majority of the different Birds of Paradise engage in this practice. The males perform courtship rituals like dances or simply showing off their assets, to impress the females.

In order to reproduce, these birds perform the human equivalent of rocking a bold look in the hopes their crush will see it. Someone has got to tell these birds to just approach their crush instead of pining from afar.

Many of the Birds of Paradises’ unique features are put on display in their mating rituals. Some have bright bold colors, some have large plumage, and some have a precise dance. If they get lucky, this wins the female over.

All of this is done with the purpose of making sure the males’ unique look passes on through the generations. The many generations of these birds caused the traits to change, as the males had to get bolder in order to impress the females.

While these birds are occasionally hunted by humans, they face little to no predators in their natural habitat. Due to this, their main goal is reproduction instead of fighting off predators.

Instead of evolving traits to fight off predators, they evolved traits to maximize reproduction. This makes the female birds extremely important for survival, if she is not impressed there will be no children. In order to keep their population alive, more and more impressive features evolved in the males.

What is This All For?

So, what makes these birds better than any other bird? These birds may not provide a stable food source or serve a vital function in our way of life, but they are a great way to explain natural selection.

Natural selection: the long-term process where certain traits in an organism are favored for survival, leading to these traits being passed down to offspring.

Simply, the traits that help an organism survive will be favored and the traits that do not help will be lost. In the case of these birds, these traits are the male’s odd sense of style. If certain traits are more favored by females, the males with those traits will get to reproduce and pass their traits down.

Understanding natural selection may not impress you as much it does me, but I promise these birds are worth your time (or at least a Google search).

So, if you have time, go look at these birds. Go watch their courtship rituals. Go listen to their singing. And be blown away by an odd yet fascinating family of birds.