Birds Prove Darwin Wrong, Both Colorful and Musically Gifted

Apparently birds can have it all. A new study shows that birds can be both colorful and musically gifted, contradicting Charles Darwin's long-held notion that animals are limited in their options to evolve showiness.

The study - the largest of its kind - was published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

There are various types of birds that showcase all sorts of show-stopping talents - birds with brilliant colors, exaggerated crests and tails, intricate dance routines, or virtuosic singing. But scientist Charles Darwin - best known for his idea of natural selection - proposed that no one bird, or animal, could possess more than one talent. Essentially, these abilities are the result of trade-offs: for a species to excel in one area, it must give up its edge in another. For example, male Northern Cardinals are a brilliant scarlet color but sing a fairly simple tune, whereas the dull brown House Wren sings one of the most complicated songs in nature.

"Animals have limited resources, and they have to spend those in order to develop showy plumage or precision singing that help them attract mates and defend territories," Nick Mason, the paper's lead author, said in a statement. "So it seems to make sense that you can't have both. But our study took a more detailed look and suggests that actually, some species can."

To test the theory, Mason and his colleagues looked at tanagers, a large family of songbirds from Central and South America, consisting of 371 species.

"If there were going to be any group of birds at all that would show this trade-off, the tanagers would be a very good candidate," Mason added.

The researchers found that there isn't any overall trend. Tanagers can either be colorful or drab, musical or plain-sounding, "or anything in between."

It's still possible that trade-offs take place at the level of genus, Mason said, or that they slightly influence species as they evolve, but this study puts a serious dent in Darwin's theory.