Pycnonotus jocosusFLICKR, JG
Tropical Asian birds appear to prefer red fruits over yellow, black, blue, and green ones, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have found. Writing in Scientific Reports today (July 17), Rui-chang Quan and his colleagues suggested that this preference among birds may contributes to the evolution of fruit color in the region.
To test birds’ fruit color preference, Quan, a professor at the academy’s Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, and his colleagues presented fresh and artificial fruits of various colors to wild-caught and hand-raised naive birds from three species (Pycnonotus jocosus, P. aurigaster, and P. melanicterus). All of the birds favored the red fruits—even the artificially colored ones—over the other colors, and avoided both real and artificial green fruits. These behavioral patterns persisted over time, ...
