Charles Darwin scratched his head over the purpose of bowers, the carefully tended sex dens of the bowerbird. But few scientists had conducted studies of these ornate constructions and their earnest ...

The construction above, called a bower, is something of a short-term “love nest” for the great bowerbird, a species native to the eucalyptus woodlands of northern Australia. “You can think of bowers ...

Gail Patricelli wasn’t so sure that courtship is really as one-sided as the ill-fated show “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” where contestants strutted, and a watcher of the other sex selected. So, ...

In many species of birds, the males are far showier than the females. Males of some species might possess colorful plumage or exaggerated physical features to catch a female’s eye, while males of ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American The article I discuss below came out last ...

The discovery of a tiny foot bone millions of years old reveals Aotearoa New Zealand was once home to a songbird species with potentially unique courtship behaviours, new research shows. These days ...

In 1937, a British scientist remarked that "the display grounds of bowerbirds are one of the strangest and least understood phenomena in nature." The bowerbird certainly is an oddity in the world of ...

Think your decked-out bachelor pad is the slickest on the block? Think again. That reputation now resides in the carefully constructed abode of the bowerbird, which transforms the art of building into ...