The birds of paradise have been getting a lot of attention lately for the elaborate courtship dances of their males, and nobody is going to argue that they don’t deserve it. But it isn’t all “males dance, females judge” in the avian world. The displays of male birds of paradise reflect high reproductive skew: a few males mate a lot, a lot of males never mate. It’s worth it to the males to devote incredible amounts of energy and resources to attracting females, because if they’re successful, they may sire many chicks. They can afford to spend all that energy and resources on crazy feathers and tricky dance moves because that’s all they have to do, parent-wise: they don’t help females build the nest or incubate the egg or raise the chicks.

Male Greater Bird-of-paradise. Photo by Ivan Teage.

But birds are diverse; the birds of paradise reflect just one point on a spectrum of mating systems. Near the other end are birds with low reproductive skew. Males of these species look pretty much like the females, and they contribute about equally to parental duties. You might expect that these species would lack dances the same way they lack meter-long curlicue tailfeathers, but some of them have dances every bit as formalized and elaborate as the birds of paradise. The difference is that these dances are duets.

Laysan Albatross pair performing courtship dance. Photo by Michael Lusk.

(Note on videos: I know clicking on videos is annoying. But it’s worth watching the videos in this post, I promise.)

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