The camera and sound recorder captured him in typical courtship mode. He bowed and tilted his body forward while puffing out his chest feathers and cooing.

The test females then watched this display without the noise. Some stopped preening themselves to view the male, but others did not and seemed to care less.

The cooing sound alone of the male, however, captured the interest of most of the females. They responded with their tail spreading moves.

The strongest reaction was observed when the females both saw and heard the male, so the apparently redundant male dance still holds importance.

"Animals use redundant signals for emphasis, and also for insurance that the message will still be transmitted even in noisy environments," explained Partan.

George Uetz, a professor of animal behavior, behavioral ecology and arachnology at the University of Cincinnati, told Animal Planet News that he and his colleagues had similar results with video-audio playback for spiders, which are not usually known for their keen sense of hearing.

Both Uetz and Partan cautioned that birds and insects see the world differently than humans do, so video playbacks might be flawed.

A pigeon watching television, for example, would see a lot of flickering, since its sight processing occurs at a faster frequency than what humans experience.

Partan has many related future studies planned to test how multiple signals impact pigeons, other birds and animals. She hinted that a robotic pigeon may help with the effort.

"We are creating life-like robotic animals that simulate the displays we are interested in, and we present these to live animals in real-time, 3-D playback presentation," she explained.

"The goal, as with the video work, is to have the animals 'tell' us what is important about the displays by their responses to the presentations. I am currently working on this with lizards and squirrels, but would like to pursue this in the future with pigeons as well."

Get More News: