Scientists have just discovered convincing evidence of long-term, reciprocal helping behavior in African starlings - Photo: scitechdaily.com
It's no surprise that humans regularly help each other, even when they're not related. But proving that this kind of cooperation occurs in animals has been much harder. Now, a new study of African starlings provides strong evidence that it does.
Led by Alexis Earl, a former PhD student in the lab of Professor Dustin Rubenstein (Columbia University), the team spent more than 20 years observing the birds. Their findings suggest that starlings engage in “reciprocity” – helping each other with the understanding that the favor will be reciprocated in the future.
"Starling societies are not just simple families, they are much more complex, consisting of a mixture of related and unrelated individuals living together, much like humans do," said Professor Rubenstein.
From 2002 to 2021, the team studied thousands of interactions between hundreds of birds and collected DNA from those in the population to examine genetic relationships.
By combining behavioral and genetic data from 40 breeding seasons, the team was able to ask questions such as: Do birds preferentially help relatives? Do they help non-relatives even when relatives are willing to help? And do they reciprocate help to specific individuals over the years?
Ultimately, they found that birds preferentially helped relatives, but also frequently and consistently helped specific non-relative birds.
“A lot of these birds are essentially forming friendships over time,” Rubenstein said. “Our next step is to figure out how these relationships form, how long they last, why some relationships stay strong while others fall apart.”
The data builds on decades of research by Rubenstein and his colleagues and students on how and why animals socialize. They have examined animal societies not only in birds, but also in a wide variety of species around the globe, including snapping shrimp in the Caribbean, wasps in Africa, beetles in Asia, and mice and lizards in Australia.
“I think this kind of reciprocal helping behavior is probably going on in a lot of animal societies, and people haven't studied it long enough to be able to detect it,” Rubenstein said.
Source: https://tuoitre.vn/loai-chim-gay-kinh-ngac-vi-biet-giup-nhau-co-di-co-lai-nhu-nguoi-20250527121612309.htm
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