Photo by nottsexminer.
We know that more people than like to admit it troll Facebook to check out ladies, but scientists have actually created a social network that they use for nothing but looking at tits.
Our more astute and wildlife-oriented readers will have guessed that the tits scientists are ogling are wild great tits — a type of bird biologists often study, probably because it has a funny name. The lead researcher on this study says that using a new data-crunch approach, his team found that they could accurately map social relationships among the birds, identifying not just birds that happened to meet each other in passing but those who had actually formed friendships:
What we have shown is that we can analyze data about individual animals, in this case great tits, to construct a ‘Facebook for animals’ revealing who affiliates with who, who are members of the same group, and which birds are regularly going to the same gatherings or ‘events.’
The team made more than 1 million observations of the birds, and looked for “periods of intense social activity.” And just like on Facebook for People, they were able to tell which birds were looking for a hook-up or a mate. Unlike on Facebook for People, they were also able to tell “which individuals are real ‘friends.'” Plus, predictions they made about which “friends” went out to eat together and which were flirting or “in a relationship” matched real-life observations. Even Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t figured out how to make actual Facebook that accurate yet.
