Love Birds: Research finds birds really do fall in love

Study shows that birds are attracted to behavioral compatibility

There are more characteristics birds have that are similar with humans. In a recent study created by a team of researchers in Germany, it was discovered that "lovebirds" isn't just a name of a specific kind of bird, but that birds really do fall in love.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - Malika Ihle, along with her team from Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, discovered that birds that chose their own mates tend to reproduce and have 37 percent more offspring than birds that were paired up by their owners.

When it comes to human relationships, a lot of people tend to be attracted to someone based on looks and social status. With birds, the situation is different, as they get paired based on attraction and compatibility. 

The researchers used 160 zebra finches for their research; they let 20 females choose from 20 males, or as the team wrote in their press release, were allowed "to go off into a life of wedded bliss."

When the birds paired off, half of the remaining birds were either left alone or paired with the other "broken-hearted" birds. Ihle wrote, "zebra finches choose mates on the basis of behavioral compatibility."

From the study, Ihle, and her co-authors, Bart Kempenaers and Wolfgang Forstmeier, found the finches that paired up on their own showed higher reproduction rates, compared to those that were paired by the team. The study showed that finches paired on their own produce higher chick mortality rate.

"The percentage of eggs that contained a dead embryo was equal between chosen and assigned pairs. In contrast, the percentage of nestlings that died before reaching independence was twice as high if chicks were raised by assigned pairs," explained Ihle, adding that if a chick was hatched in a nest, the chick will only have 50 percent chance of surviving. 

Their research were published in the latest journal of PLoS Biology.

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