Birds also make symbolic gestures

When visiting the nests, the female titmouse sits on a branch and flaps its wings to invite its companion to come home first. For Japanese ornithologists who have very precisely observed this behavior, this is the first time that we have proven that these birds are capable of such a symbolic gestural language.

Hervé Poirier, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloonexplains to us that titmice are very polite…

franceinfo: Chickadees that are very polite, to the point of letting their companion go first? Tell us…

Hervé Poirier: At the very beginning of the week, in the science ticket on Monday, Anne Le Gall spoke to us about the functioning of the memory of titmice, capable of remembering all the places where they have hidden their food for the winter.

Observations carried out by Japanese ornithologists highlight another facet of this behavior. They are also very, very polite. And they express this politeness with very precise gesture language.

That’s to say ? What actions do they make?

It is most often the female who accomplishes this, when the couple returns to the nest to bring food to their young. Placed on a branch next to the nest, it flaps its wings quickly to invite its companion to enter first. The equivalent of “But after you my dear…” that humans can express, by bending their head a little, and opening their palm.

They are specialists in animal communication at the University of Tokyo who precisely observed this behavior by following 8 pairs of Japanese titmice during 321 nest visits. These ornithologists found that the titmouse only flaps its wings when its partner is there, and that it stops doing so when it has entered the nest.

This may seem trivial enough. But this is the first documented evidence in birds of a gesture that requires a very high level of cognition: a symbolic gesture.

A symbolic gesture?

Yes, we had already observed so-called “deictic” gestures in birds, with a much more literal meaning, such as pointing with the wing at an object, to invite attention to it. Here, it is about transmitting a specific message: “But after you my dear…” Much like we do when we wave our hands to say “Bye” or give a thumbs up to say “everything is fine”. Which requires a much higher level of cognition: it is a real language.

Chickadees were known to have complex vocal communications, with different sounds combined into sentences through grammar. We now know that symbolic gestures are also part of their vocabulary. And that they can express very touching politeness.