As I’ve touted about this for a long time very blogbirds are terrible and they should all be canceled. But perhaps not more so than the lyrebirds, recently discovered as the early 2000s pickup artists of the flying dinosaur world. These crazy birds will stop at nothing to score, including doing admittedly dope shit like having a ‘display’ area, which I assume is an adult apartment, complete with towels and more than one pillow, along with devising elaborate and impressive dance routines. But they also routinely try to seal the deal with their bird Bumble matches by doing very bungled things like imitating the sounds of impending danger so that the lyrebird is likely to fall into the old rom-com trap to find the nearest available filthy-but-love lyrebird, because why not when we’re all about to die anyway.
According to For researchers, male lyrebirds will mimic a variety of sounds from approaching predators, including the “harassment” made by clusters of birds at the approach of a predator to ensure their bird date freezes long enough for some mating:
When the mimic calls were analyzed in detail, researchers were able to detect bullying that sounded like eastern yellow robin, brown thorn birds and white eyebrow worms. Occasionally, the researchers discovered alarm calls that sounded like two types of possums. “
These PUA birds aren’t the only animals to do this; they are simply the most over-the-top with it. And while these birds “are capable of amazing and awful things,” says Dr. Anastasia Dalziell, apparently not all is a lyrebird situation, and we shouldn’t be so quick to cancel them:
“The males pull out all the stops to allow the female to mate. It’s just one of the many things men do, ”adds Dalziell. “They have a beautiful dance routine and they sing from sunrise to sunset and so the female gets all those other beautiful signals. We shouldn’t see the lyrebirds as terrible. “
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Okay, but these are the same researchers who threw a snake at these already squashed birds to try and get a control sound, so it’s clear the problem is systemic. Lady lyrebirds, please know that regardless of my issues with birds in general, I pride myself on being a birding feminist above all, so if any of you want to get in touch to tell your story, my DMs are always open.