Female Japanese quail affiliate with live males that they have seen mate on video

A female Japanese quail, Coturnix japonica, will increase her tendency to affiliate and mate with a conspecific male after seeing him court and mate with another female. In the present study, we found that female quail increased the time they spent near a live target male after seeing that same male court and mate with another female in a 5-min video displayed on an active-matrix TFT monitor. However, female quail that were shown 5-min video sequences of either a target male standing alone or a randomly selected male courting and mating did not subsequently increase the time they spent near a live target male. These findings provide the first demonstration of which we are aware of birds transferring individual identification from a video sequence to a real animal. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.