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The Life Scientific: Episode 119: Nick Davies on cuckoos

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Factual: Science & Nature

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Nick Davies on cuckoos

Episode 119

Episode 119: Nick Davies on cuckoos

BBC Radio 4 - The Life Scientific, Nick Davies on cuckoos

The battle between cuckoos and warblers, as told by Nick Davies to Jim Al-Khalili.

Nick Davies talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his life in the reeds, studying the evolutionary arms race between the cuckoo and the birds it dupes into bringing up its young.

Nick Davies has been teasing apart the dark relationship between the cuckoo and the birds it tricks into bringing up its young, for more than three decades. The Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Cambridge has spent more than 30 springs and summers on nearby fenland of watching, recording and crucially experimenting. Nick's studies have deployed simple yet ingenious experiments, among the reed beds where the birds nest. They have involved mock eggs, stuffed birds and miniature loudspeakers, to piece together the cuckoo's dark story. He has even swopped cuckoo chicks with blackbird nestlings in the nests of the feathered parasite's victims. No birds are harmed in his revealing tests.

Prof Davies also talks to Jim al-Khalili about the origins of his life with birds, and the revolution in animal behaviour science beginning as he began his scientific career. Ideas about the selfish gene and game theory, along with DNA fingerprint in the 1980's, transformed the research of zoologists asking 'why' questions about what animals do.

Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.

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Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future.

Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future

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Episode 119: Nick Davies on cuckoos

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