Rainbow birds for Pride Month!
When you think of rainbow birds, this particular guy might be the first bird you think of: the Rainbow Lorikeet!
They’re honestly so beautiful. How did they get their amazing colours? Do their personalities match their bright looks? What do they do, what do they eat, how do they live? I want to know everything about these birds!
Well, I may not know everything about the Rainbow Lorikeet, but I do have a few fun facts about them!
Get ready to be amazed by the stunning Rainbow Lorikeet, nature's very own rainbow bird! 🌈🦜
Found only in Australia along the eastern seaboard, from northern Queensland to South Australia, these colorful parrots are a sight to behold!
What makes Rainbow Lorikeets even more fascinating is that they don't show any visible differences between males and females. That means, you need to be a bird detective and rely on veterinary or DNA analysis to determine their sex!
This may not sound that interesting to non-bird lovers, but a lot of other colourful birds are sexually dimorphic.
A recap: what’s sexual dimorphism?
In nature, many animals and even plants exhibit a phenomenon called sexual dimorphism, where males and females of the same species look different from each other in exciting ways. These differences can include unique features like size, weight, color, markings, and even behaviors.
Think of male and female humans: we’re not the MOST sexually dimorphic animal in the world, but women do tend to have bigger breasts than men, and men are usually taller and broader in size.
In the bird world, you can think of species like peacocks for a good example of sexual dimorphism!
And it's not just physical traits, but also passive displays like ornamental feathering or song-calling that have evolved through the fascinating process of sexual selection. (Some male birds sing, and female birds sit around them and pick the best singer to mate with!)
Sometimes these differences are subtle, and other times they're exaggerated, but they're all a result of the amazing forces of natural and sexual selection at work in nature.
Anyway, back to the birds:
So why are they so colourful?
One possibility is that it helps different species of lorikeets recognise each other in the wild more easily. They seem to like these bright colours in each other, so I’d say they sexually select the mates that are more attractive in their eyes.
But! Even though Rainbow Lorikeets have plumage patches that come in a variety of vibrant colors, from ultraviolet blue to deep crimson and black, on their faces and front sides … their wings and backs are mostly green, which helps them blend in with their tree canopy surroundings and stay hidden from predators flying above!
In a recent study published in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, researchers used special techniques to study the lorikeet's plumage. They took photographs of historic collection specimens and used a program that translates the colors into "bird vision" to analyse the data.
What they found was that the Rainbow Lorikeet's green plumage patches (which, as we talked about above, helps them blend in/stay hidden from predators) have remained relatively unchanged over long periods of evolutionary time. This supports the belief that their green patches act as camouflage.
But the rainbow of colors on their faces and front sides evolved rapidly and independently of each other. The researchers also identified three groups of plumage that evolved together through a process called mosaic evolution, where different traits evolve independently of each other. These groups include the face and head, the back and wings, and the breast region and lower abdomen.
Why do you think the lorikeets evolved such unique and colorful plumage?
For me, I’d say it’s probably because the birds are more attractive to certain traits, and so they choose mates with those looks, and passed on their genes.
You can think about it like… let’s say all of us humans suddenly think big noses are super duper attractive. We end up picking partners with big noses, and over a couple of generations, all our kids have big noses too!
And then perhaps a few generations later, we suddenly really love dark skin, and pick partners with dark skin only, resulting in children with dark skin and big noses.
That’s my take on how and why certain unique plumage began evolving in these birds, anyway! What do you think?
Those are stunning birds! Thanks for sharing!🌈