Feminist birds

[NoBinturongsHereMate]

Or feminist bird watchers, anyway.

Ornithologists and behavioural scientists focus on male birds - which often have brighter plumage and are easier to identify. They've assumed female birds do nothing interesting, and don't even sing.

This group is proving them wrong.

https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0lwvvbf?

This is really interesting. I must admit I've been quite sexist with my bird watching. All the kids picture books about birds feature male birds. And it's got me thinking, because we watch a lot of penguin documentaries. In penguins, the sex roles are slightly different to a lot of other animals. If it was female penguins standing around in Antarctica doing not a lot and holding onto eggs while the male went off hunting, would penguin documentaries still almost exclusively feature egg incubation and long walks to the sea? Or would we suddenly reimagine penguin documentaries with underwater cameras following them around while they hunt underwater (and finally find out how far/where they travel while out hunting)?
Now that I think about it, I'd quite like to see a penguin documentary that focuses on the females, I don't think I've ever seen one.

I’m getting better at noticing the sex of birds in species where there is some dimorphism - sometimes obvious, sometimes more subtle. It’s extra pleasing to spot a kingfisher and be able to say ‘he’ or ‘she’.

Related to this is of course the old issue of ‘default male’ … someone seeing an animal and calling it ‘he’, and if you call one ‘she’ you’re likely to be asked ‘how do you know it’s female’ but never the other way round!

This drives me mad (and your last point is so true). So unless I know the sex (e.g. a blackbird) I default to she.

Yesterday I discovered that female eagle owls are much bigger than males.

I was at a city zoo the other day and this big, beautiful and muddy pig with a row of teats was being called a he.

Difference between sexes is so fascinating. Bit weird to talk about it in the context of human sociology though. We’re not birds.

If we were being observed by a David Attenborough type which sex of human would be considered the more interesting to look at? Without artificial additions we’re all a bit dull. Beige to brown skin, no lovely fur or markings. Maybe a redhead or bright blonde would be an interesting variety. A luxuriant beard?

There are certainly more beautiful mammals on earth. Don’t most mammals look much the same except the males are bigger?

Don’t most mammals look much the same except the males are bigger?

The lion would disagree.

(Sneaky way to placemark for later, thanks OP)

The sociology aspect is about how the human birdwatchers etc behave re the sex differences in birds.

I've read that the male lion's mane, and the male human's facial hair, are both adaptations that provide some protection in fights with other males (or I suppose attacking a female, if it comes to that). Which is rather a sad comment on what our species has evolved to do.

As would the orangutan, elephant seal, red.deer, mandrill...

I'm not very good at bird identification but that is one funny looking pig/sow.

Yup, puffins left 3 weeks ago, boo! I did look into going in June / July, but work and poor weather didn't allow.

We saw two seal pups, thousands of shags, (90,000 resident, apparently) gannets, guillemots, a few razorbills, some pigeons... and a 14 foot basking shark - the skipper said its the first he's seen for 12 years!

Shags 😁

Dimorphism in chimpanzees (both pan paniscus and pan troglodytes) is quite pronounced as well. I did postgrad on it.