The vivid coloring of insects and amphibians often signals that they are poisonous. Such a mechanism is called aposematism. As a rule, even one attempt to eat aposematically colored prey is remembered for a long time by the predator and causes it to avoid similar individuals in the future. On the other hand, bright colors attract more attention and make carriers of such coloring more vulnerable. If each predatory animal had to independently verify the danger of a particular species, then aposematism would hardly have developed at all in the evolutionary process. Nevertheless, it is found in insects and amphibians around the world, which means that this is a successful defense strategy.
The development of aposematism, according to scientists, could contribute to many factors, including the social transfer of experience. A team of zoologists led by Rose Thorogood showed that tits can learn to avoid dangerous prey by simply observing the behavior of their relatives. When a bird sees that another individual is disgusted with a particular treat, it will most likely also reject it.
Zoologists have set up a series of experiments with wild big tits (Parus major), which played the role of "model predator". Birds were placed in an enclosure, where snacks were served - pieces of almonds. Some of the nuts were spoiled and wrapped in a paper box with a black square, while on the other packages a black cross was drawn.
Researchers filmed a video of how the tits unfurl bait with a tasteless prey: the birds quite clearly showed disgust, shaking their head and wiping their beaks on the perch on which they sat. After the recording was shown to their relatives on a special screen. It turned out that the tits that looked at the video not only chose their "victim" more quickly, but 32 percent less often than in the control group they chose almonds in a package with a black square.
In addition, the modeling conducted by the researchers showed that the social transfer of experience was to play an important role in the evolution of production. If predators learn by observing their relatives, the chances of developing aposematism become noticeably higher.