Salt n Peppa, sage-grouse back to life, tempting males for science

June 5, 2018 9:21 PM

Here's a taxidermy bird stuck on some wheels. Specifically, it's a female Greater Sage-Grouse, and it's Salt (or Peppa), Fembot version 2, designed and operated by Professor Gail Patricelli and her teams to better study the noble and stately male Greater Sage-Grouse.

Patricelli's main focus of study is understanding how birds communicate, especially during courtship rituals. As she discovered early in her career, though, studying these behaviors in the wild in any sort of controlled way is hard. So two decades ago Patricelli turned to remote-controlled robots wrapped in taxidermied skins to impersonate female birds.

Version 1 of the Fembot ran on tracks, but one male that would rush the fembot and derail it--an action that he tried with real females, as well. Patricelli called this an “unsuccessful courtship tactic.” There were other issues with early fembots, but Patricelli now has two wheel-mounted models, now to provide what's called an outside option in economics, to better understand and mitigate the impacts of development, notably fracking, on these birds. What's good for the bird is good for the herd, and 350 other species that call sagebrush home, as stated by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service on their Greater Sage-Grouse website.

posted by filthy light thief (9 comments total)

Best of the web.
posted by grouse at 4:10 AM on June 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

Just want to say that I love me some Greater Sage Grouse. When I see those wubbly-wobbly chest bags, I just fall to bits every time. Maybe I was a female Greater Sage Grouse in a previous life.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 4:57 AM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love science. Especially when it involves fembots. Bird fembots. With wheels.
posted by cyclotronboy at 5:14 AM on June 6, 2018

one male that would rush the fembot and derail it--an action that he tried with real females, as well. Patricelli called this an “unsuccessful courtship tactic.”

As any ornithologist will tell you, it is more effective to shake your thang.
posted by box at 9:24 AM on June 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

A lot of their remaining habitat is in WY - my brother refers to them somewhat fondly as "prairie chickens."
posted by aspersioncast at 9:48 AM on June 6, 2018

Not included in the post because it (very sadly) doesn't exist yet: a music video, set to Salt 'n' Pepa's "Let's Talk About Sex," but with the two fembots, Salt 'n' Pepa -- per Patricelli "one of them had slightly lighter plumage than the other, and we had grand plans we haven't really followed through on."
posted by filthy light thief at 11:33 AM on June 6, 2018

I hope those grand plans include not just making a video, but also re-writing and -recording 'Let's Talk About AIDS' with lyrics about avian flu.
posted by box at 12:09 PM on June 6, 2018

>
A lot of their remaining habitat is in WY - my brother refers to them somewhat fondly as "prairie chickens."

Prairie Chickens (Greater AND Lesser) are a different, but closely related, species.
posted by gingerbeer at 7:40 PM on June 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

Researcher looks over a rise in the land and sees a researcher from a competing team operating the male bird that her female bird just hooked up with. "Shit."
posted by pracowity at 3:02 AM on June 7, 2018