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Abstract
Mimicry is widespread in the animal kingdom. Parasitic cuckoos can reduce the risk of their offspring being rejected by employing morphological and egg mimicry. Female common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) can deceive their hosts by mimicking sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) calls, thus improving brood parasitism success. However, few experiments have confirmed the hypothesis that female cuckoos can successfully mimic sparrowhawk calls. We used two populations of wild free-range chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus), which are not cuckoo hosts, to study the effects of four different types of bird calls on their anti-predatory behavior. Results showed that both female cuckoo and sparrowhawk calls elicited vigilance and escape responses from chickens, while the chickens did not respond to either male common cuckoo or Oriental turtle dove (Streptopelia orientalis) calls. This suggests that female cuckoo calls can not only deceive their hosts, but also successfully deceive their non-host birds. Our study further confirms the accuracy with which female cuckoos can mimic sparrowhawk calls.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to thank local people in rural areas of Yibin and Dazhou for their kind permits to carry out the playback experiments.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ETHICAL STANDARD
The experiments reported here comply with the current laws of China. Fieldwork was carried out without specific permit.
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION
W. Liang designed the study; X. Jiang and C. Zhang carried out field experiments; J. Liu performed statistical analyses; X. Jiang and J. Liu wrote the draft manuscript; W. Liang revised and improved the manuscript. All authors approved the final submission.