Male canaries sing not only to attract females, but their enchanting melodies can accomplish much more.
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| Canary. (Photo: Livescience) |
A recent study reveals that female canaries can alter the size of their eggs and potentially the sex of their offspring when exposed to the sweet serenades of a male.
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany and University College London played a series of male canary songs (ranging from tunes deemed sexy to those considered less appealing) to 45 domesticated female canaries. The results showed that the more attractive the song, the larger the eggs laid by the females.
In the wild, larger eggs are often more likely to produce male chicks, but the researchers found no difference in the sex ratio of the offspring when females were exposed to different melodies. Since the sexy songs resulted in larger eggs that did not hatch into males, the scientific team hypothesized that canary mothers might influence the sex of their young in more than one way.
T. An
