About the episode
In the Netherlands we already have difficulty letting our fellow man get off a train properly before we cram ourselves into it. In some other countries they are a lot better at this and people wait neatly in line.
For example in Japan. Now it turns out that this does not only apply to the human inhabitants. Researchers at the University of Tokyo say they have discovered that a small bird, the Japanese great tit, also has neat manners.
When a pair returns to the nest box with food, they first wait together in front of the entrance, until one of them makes a wing gesture to the other that seems to indicate: after you, go first.
The researchers draw this conclusion after studying 320 nest visits by 8 bird pairs. The bird that made the wing gesture, which they did not do when they were alone, almost always let the other one go first. And the females gave way to the males more often than the other way around.
If this is indeed the case, it would mean that more animal species communicate with these types of gestures than previously thought.
In addition to humans and monkeys, gestures have also previously been seen in ravens and fish, among others. But in those cases it usually involved some kind of pointing. Like: that thing over there, or that way. But symbolic gestures, such as our hand gesture for ‘after you’, have never been seen in this way before.
In any case, the researchers see it as a reason to study much more bird communication. And who knows, maybe they will also turn out to have their own gesture for ‘thumbs up’, or one of our other frequently used gems.
Read more about the research here: Wild bird gestures “after you”
