七彩文鳥擇偶靠右眼？

這幾天是候鳥來的季節，原本我對於鳥類並不是很有興趣。

但是因為身國中理化老師的緣故，一直都有接觸到一些關於賞鳥的相關訊息。

在facebook上也看到宜蘭縣野鳥學會的伙伴拍攝的野鳥的照片，

就讀宜蘭高中時也知道物理老師余老師是「鳥人」（極為愛鳥人士）

今年八月份有機會在武荖坑環境教育中心參加研習，

短短的兩小時的參訪，似乎引爆了我對於『鳥的生態、鳥的一切』好奇的甜蜜點。

就在今天『科學人粉絲團』中看到標題：胡錦鳥擇偶靠右眼？

教師發想：

1.其實，我剛看到標題『胡錦鳥』是什麼我都還不是很熟悉，還有點誤以為看成胡錦濤？

   結果就是赫赫有名的Viewsonic的標誌，那三隻可愛的七彩文鳥。

2.而在臺灣，其實有些人養過白文鳥，有些人養過黑文鳥，很好奇有沒有人養過七彩文鳥，結果在網路上查

竟然是有，而且還寫成部落格，圖文並茂呢。

原文雖然只有短短五篇A4 但是感覺上對於鳥類求偶有興趣的國中理化老師而言已經足夠了

In the eye of the beholder: visual mate choice lateralization in a polymorphic songbird

Birds choose mates on the basis of colour, song and body size, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying these mating decisions. Reports that zebra finches prefer to view mates with the right eye during courtship, and that immediate early gene expression associated with courtship behaviour is lateralized in their left hemisphere suggest that visual mate choice itself may be lateralized. To test this hypothesis, we used the Gouldian finch, a polymorphic species in which individuals exhibit strong, adaptive visual preferences for mates of their own head colour. Black males were tested in a mate-choice apparatus under three eye conditions: left-monocular, right-monocular and binocular. We found that black male preference for black females is so strongly lateralized in the right-eye/left-hemisphere system that if the right eye is unavailable, males are unable to respond preferentially, not only to males and females of the same morph, but also to the strikingly dissimilar female morphs. Courtship singing is consistent with these lateralized mate preferences; more black males sing to black females when using their right eye than when using their left. Beauty, therefore, is in the right eye of the beholder for these songbirds, providing, to our knowledge, the first demonstration of visual mate choice lateralization. （