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'Fascinating' Polite Little Bird Uses Wing Gesture To Say 'After You'


3 days ago 11
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A remarkable bird species is able to communicate politely with a partner by using its wings, researchers have discovered.

The Japanese tit (Parus minor) is able to gesture by flapping to indicate certain messages such as "after you"—with females doing so more often than males.

This discovery is highly significant as using gestures for communication has only ever been seen in great apes and humans, according to a new paper in the journal Current Biology.

after you japanese tit
The the Japanese tit with food in its mouth, and doing the “after you” gesture. Suzuki and Sugita, 2024/ Current Biology

The birds were observed arriving at a nest box with food in pairs. As they waited outside on perches, one would flutter its wings toward the other. This was interpreted by researchers as indicating to the other bird as permission to enter first, the equivalent of us saying "after you."

"In our latest discovery, we revealed that the Japanese tit uses gestures to communicate with their mate," Toshitaka Suzuki, an associate professor from the University of Tokyo, said in a statement. "For over 17 years, I have been engaged in the study of these fascinating birds. They not only use specific calls to convey particular meanings, but also combine different calls into phrases using syntactic rules. These diverse vocalizations led me to initiate this research into their potential use of physical gestures."

The researchers observed over 320 nest visits across 8 mating pairs of Japanese tit, where the parents would enter the nest box one at a time when they were carrying food back to their chicks. They saw that the birds would often find a nearby perch and flutter their wings at each other before entering, which prompted the other mate to enter the box first, with the one who fluttered entering second.

They also noticed that the gesture was performed more often by the female of the pair.

"We were surprised to find that the results were much clearer than we had expected," said Suzuki.

This finding was exciting to the researchers because they believe it fulfills the criteria to be considered a true symbolic gesture, something only previously observed in apes including chimpanzees and bonobos. This is backed up by the fact that it only occurred in the presence of their mate, it stopped after the mate entered the nest.

Additionally, the fluttering was aimed at the mate and not the nest box itself, meaning that it wasn't a pointing sort of gesture, called deictic gesturing, which has previously been seen in animals such as ravens and fish.

chimps
Chimps gesturing. Japanese tits may also have the ability to gesture, making it the first time this behavior has been noted outside of primates. ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS

Symbolic gestures like "after you" are thought to need complex cognition, however, which has not been seen in many other species except us. This significantly advances our understanding of visual communication in birds, the researchers said.

"There is a hypothesis that walking on two legs allowed humans to maintain an upright posture, freeing up their hands for greater mobility, which in turn contributed to the evolution of gestures. Similarly, when birds perch on branches, their wings become free, which we think may facilitate the development of gestural communication," said Suzuki.

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

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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.

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