Male (green) and female nestling at 5 weeks old, with lead author Professor Robert Heinsohn (photo: R Heinsohn)
The mysterious behaviour of female Eclectus parrots killing their sons immediately after they hatch has been unravelled by a team of researchers from the Australian National University. In a paper published online in Current Biology this month, the team from the Fenner School of Environment and Society and the Research School of Biology describe the infanticide and the conditions surrounding the parrot's choice to kill their young. "It's interesting in itself because infanticide is weird - why do you have babies and then kill them?" lead author Professor Robert Heinsohn said. "Humans are the only other species that systematically kill their own offspring of one sex. But here's a case in Eclectus parrots where we can show there is a very clear adaptive reason." Professor Heinsohn has been studying the Eclectus roratus parrot, native to Papua New Guinea and the Cape York area in Northern Queensland, for over ten years. The sex ratio of the birds caught his attention when he observed captive birds producing long stretches of chicks of the same sex in succession, sometimes up to thirty male chicks in a row. Professor Heinsohn and his research team spent six months at a time in remote rainforests in Cape York studying the parrot in its natural environment.
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