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September 9, 2011

Strange But True!

Q. Why did Dutch Nobel laureate Niko Tinbergen paint dummy eggs black with Day-Glo blue polka dots to fool songbirds into thinking they were the real thing?

A. In the 1930s, he discovered that birds that lay small pale-blue eggs speckled with gray would abandon them to sit on giant black-and-blue counterfeit eggs, so big the birds constantly slid off and had to hop back on, says Deidre Barrett in “Supernormal Stimuli.” Tinbergen coined “supernormal stimuli” for these imitations that appeal to instincts and exert a stronger attraction than the real thing. He did a similar experiment with graylag geese and found that they ignored their own eggs while making “a heroic attempt” to roll a VOLLEYBALL back into their nest!


 
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