Scientists have discovered something quite curious about the way
the male splendid fairy-wrens attract their mates: they use fear
as a flirtation device! Using a horror film to bring your date
closer is a classic move in the teenage playbook. Now, a study
of Australian birds finds that other animals use the same "scary
movie effect" to attract female attention, by hitchhiking mating
signals onto the calls of predators. Male splendid fairy-wrens,
a sexually promiscuous small bird native to Australia, are known
to sing a special song each time they hear the call of one of
their predators, the butcherbirds. New research from scientists
at the University of Chicago finds that this seemingly dangerous
behavior actually serves as a call to potential mates -- a
flirtation using fear. Published in the journal Behavioral
Ecology, the study involved painstaking field research playing
sound clips to splendid fairy wrens at a conservation center in
Southern Australia. Experiments determined that the "vocal
hitchhiking" o