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Animal behaviour

Some begging is actually bragging

Nature volume 532, pages 180–181 (2016)Cite this article

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A meta-analysis of 143 bird species finds huge variation in parental responses to chicks' begging signals, and shows that parental strategies depend on environmental factors, such as the predictability and quality of food supplies.

Within just two weeks of its eggs hatching, each songbird parent delivers around 2,000 prey animals to the nest. The food transforms the cold-blooded, naked and tiny hatchlings into warm-blooded, fully feathered flying machines 20 times their original size. Each arrival of a parent at the nest is met with 'begging' signals. But are these signals actually begging, and if not, what do they indicate?

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Figure 1: Feeding strategies.

Steve Shinn

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Douglas W. Mock is in the Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA.,

    Douglas W. Mock

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  1. Douglas W. Mock
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Correspondence to Douglas W. Mock.

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Mock, D. Some begging is actually bragging. Nature 532, 180–181 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature17317

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