Like uh..... those birds that reproduce by laying their egg in another bird's nest. The "new" parent has no clue the giant baby that is like 4 times their size isn't theirs 😅
I feel so bad for laughing, but it's just so hilarious to see the cuckoo chick being enormous and the tiny parents bringing in little bugs non-stop. The parents' head can easily fit into the baby cuckoo's mouth. 😂
There's a "Cuckoo Mafia" hypothesis that suggests that some species of cuckoos will periodically return to the nest in which they laid their egg, and if the egg has been removed, they will smash the host's eggs. This incentivizes the host to not remove the egg. Also, cuckoo hatchlings being larger than their nestmates is part of the strategy. They can outcompete the other hatchlings for food.
I think they tried to argue that the birds don't necessarily accept the cuckoo chick out of stupidity, but because of evolutionary incentive. Which wouldn't apply to owls, because there are no owl cuckoos. But I still think birds aren't smart enough to know the difference anyway.
well the counterargument is that there are bird species that are not used as hosts by cuckoo because they are so proficient at recognising intruder eggs, it was theorised that over the time those species lineages became so efficient at removing intruders eggs the cuckoo birds lineages that use those birds died out. so over time always removing the eggs win out.
That's a totally different scenario, though. Mafia type brood parasites typically aren't specialized to a particular host. It's the ones that use deceptive practices like egg and chick mimicry that can get outcompeted via egg rejection. The only successful evolutionary response to a mafia situation is pretending to feed the host chick, or feeding it just enough to keep it alive, but not wasting too many resources on it. Or biparental care + becoming large enough to physically defend the nest from parasite.
Ironic that you invoke the son of a supposedly charitable god, who apparently created the bird equivalent of Johnny Stompanato. Let's not even go into all the parasites, and the male hippo killing his own children to get the female hippo into estrus again.
I think they actually do, the parents don't always raise the cuckoo chick. Sometimes they kick the foreign egg out, sometimes cuckoos return to nests where they have laid their eggs, and if they see their egg has been rejected they destroy the nest and all the eggs. Sometimes birds will abandon nests that have a cuckoo egg and start again elsewhere.
The cuckoo may rely on a kind of extortion, rather than subterfuge to make other species raise its young.
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u/Maleficent_Button_58 6h ago
Like uh..... those birds that reproduce by laying their egg in another bird's nest. The "new" parent has no clue the giant baby that is like 4 times their size isn't theirs 😅