One of the most remarkable animals in the animal kingdom is the Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae). Its ability to mimic the sounds of a variety of species is nothing short of astonishing. The males use their vocal ability, along with their flashy tail, to attract potential mates. In fact, up to 70% of their vocalisations consist of imitations from up to 20 local species of bird.

It has been thought that females are impressed by the repertoire of sounds that a male can produce. This hypothesis does seem plausible in the case of M.  novaehollandiae as his repertoire is quite extensive however, for other species of bird, this is not the case. A new hypothesis is not how large a repertoire is but how accurate the mimicry of the sounds is.

A study from 2012 set out to test just how accurate the mimicry of M.  novaehollandiae is. They assessed the accuracy with which the lyrebird was able to imitate the complex song of the Grey shrike-thrush, Colluricincla harmonica. The accuracy of the imitation was found to be extremely strong and the only deviation came from the fewer amount of repetitions that were produced by the lyrebird. It was so accurate that it was able to fool the grey shrike-thrush itself.

This idea of accuracy being driven from female preferences has also been examined specifically and with the use of spectrograph cross-correlations, they were able to provide ample evidence to support this alternative hypothesis to the previous repertoire idea.

References

Coleman S. W, Patricelli G. L, Coyle B, Siani J & Borgia G. (2007). Female preferences drive the evolution of mimetic accuracy in male sexual displays. Biology Letters, 3(5), 463-466.

Dalziell A. H & Magrath R. D. (2012). Fooling the experts: accurate vocal mimicry in the song of the superb lyrebird, Menura novaehollandiae. .Animal Behaviour, 83(6), 1401-1410.