In a strange experiment, a Japanese scientist named Toshitaka Suzuki from the University of Tokyo wore a big bird mask on his head for a whole year. He did this to fool a group of great tits and approach their nest without scaring them away.
This came into view when Suzuki shared a weird and rather odd picture on Twitter. The picture was taken in the Nagano Prefecture forests and showed another scientist wearing the bird headgear. This scientist decided to wear the bird disguise for a year so that he could get close to a great tits’ nest without making them feel alarmed.
This is because many bird experts already knew that some bird types including the great tits could remember human faces.
They would stop their regular tweeting and instead make alert calls if they saw these people coming. The Japanese scientist wanted to study the birds’ tweeting, but he ended up on their “danger” list. So, he thought of disguising himself as a big bird to get near the birds and listen to their tweeting.
Before, the unnamed scientist, who studies how bats and birds act and change over time, needed to go near the great tits’ nest to weigh their baby birds. But after that, whenever the birds saw him, they stopped their usual sounds and started making a special sound that means “danger.” This made it hard for the scientist to study their language. So, he came up with the idea of using a disguise.
According to Prof. Suzuki, his colleague wore the disguise for a whole year, but it didn’t work. Whenever the great tits noticed him coming, they still made their danger sounds. The result was exactly the same when the man finally took off the bird headgear and tried getting closer to the nest.