Oh, the amazing findings that researchers discover when given enough time and money to do whatever the heck they want conduct scientific studies!
So there are scientists from universities in Exeter, France, and Switzerland who conducted new research in order to study birds. Not the Twitter bird. Not whatever other bird you may be thinking of, but the kind that chirps and tweets and flies. Real birds.
Their study was about interaction between the baby birds and their parents and how this affected their ability to survive and thrive. Guess what? It looks like birds have a social networking system of their own.
I could have told you that, even though I am no ornithologist.
The findings of the researchers show that social networking is a very important factor for birds in terms of raising a successful family. While we may only think of the mommy bird feeding worms down her babies’ throats, how we behave on Twitter actually is supposed to play a role as well.
I don’t know if it is just me, or the study of the bird families and the Twitter connection is pushing it. Then again, Dr. Nick Royle, one of the researchers says:
“Users of Twitter will know that the more interactions they have, the more successful their profile is likely to be, and it’s similar for nesting great tits; at least at nests where mothers provide most of the feeds. When fathers do most of the work offspring are much less gregarious. For young great tits social networking is related to the amount of physical contact each nestling has with their siblings, not the amount of tweeting they do. But using our social networks measure enabled us to demonstrate a novel link between how family members interact with one another and the success of those families.”
And since he’s the one with a “Dr.” in front of his name, I guess we should believe him.