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A study published today in Science Advances reveals that very small changes in the genome can lead to very big differences in appearance or behavior -- differences that are big enough to represent a ...

Female Bengalese finches have a natural preference for their fathers’ songs over the songs of any other birds — a preference they will carry for their entire lives. (CN) — Female Bengalese finches, ...

Using the word “know” loosely, that’s a simplified version of a new analysis of zebra finches by neuroscientists at the University of California, San Francisco. Sarah Woolley explains that males sing ...

I tend to take house finches for granted, as I suspect most birders do. But there’s more to these ubiquitous little birds than meets the eye. Biologists have been teasing out the details of their ...

Promiscuous female finches are picky with sperm, a new study suggests. The results show females of a particular finch species can select sperm from the males that are a more ideal genetic match, ...

A new study shows that female finches may cheat on their partners not because cheating is beneficial to them, but because it's beneficial for males. Couldn't female cheating be beneficial to her as ...

Female zebra finches are choosy but flexible when it comes to finding a mate, allowing them to avoid the fitness costs of being too selective when competition for males is high, researchers report.

A pigment that makes feathers and hair orange helps prevent cellular damage by removing excess cysteine from cells.

Zebra finches form monogamous lifetime partnerships, but both males and females indulge in extramarital sex. The benefit for the males is clear: the chance to sire more offspring than fidelity ...

Birds are notoriously promiscuous; even species that are referred to as “monogamous” often indulge in extra affairs on the side. For males, the advantages of these extrapair copulations are obvious: ...