The Survival Advantage of Being a Fancy Baby Coot
As adults, American coots have a drab color scheme, with black bodies and white bills. Their chicks, however, have an aesthetic that’s part drunk friar, part disheveled lion, and part tequila sunrise. Their faces and bald pates are bright red, while their necks are encircled in scruffy yellow-orange plumes.
These garish colors are very strange. Most bird chicks come in dull, camouflaged hues. And while nature is full of animals with elaborate, conspicuous ornamental traits, from the resplendent tails of peacocks to the branching antlers of deer, many of these traits are about sex. They make their bearers more attractive to mates, bird be so fancy? It clearly has nothing to do with sex. And as Bruce Lyon and Daizaburo Shizuka from the University of California at Santa Cruz have shown, the garish colors aren’t signs of quality chicks either. They’re the opposite.
