She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not...
 Gail Patricelli controlled a robotic female bowerbird at a bower. Remote control device in foreground. Photo by Gail Patricelli |
At the break of dawn, Gail Patricelli crawled out of "bed," a slab of wood and thin padding, and walked about the primitive shack in preparation for another adventurous hike through the eucalyptus forests of Wallaby, Australia. She carefully placed her "fembot," a robotic female Satin Bowerbird, in an old beer cooler outfitted with various scraps of metal, wood, Velcro tape, and a tuna can to secure her in place. Grabbing the cooler and a remote control with one hand and a portable blind and chair with the other, she headed out the door to carry out her experiment for the day.
Patricelli, now an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis, was in the midst of her graduate work, studying the interaction between male and female bowerbirds during courtship. Near a patch of ground where a male bowerbird often displayed to females, she set up the blind. Once inside, Patricelli became a puppeteer, manipulating the robot by remote control to see how the male bowerbird would react to the fembot’s changing behavior. A better understanding of male-female interplay and communication, she hoped, would provide an important piece of a biological puzzle: how do courtship rituals evolve?