Software that reveals the trick of the cube

They are eggs of 8 species of nest birds that the cuckoo lays their eggs. Above and on the left, carricero carricero (Acrocephalus arundinaceus), winter(Anthus pratensis) and common carricero (Acrocephalus

The cuckoo is known to lay its eggs in the nest of other bird species. The cuckoo female seeks the nests of the birds of the species that raised it, since this lineage of the cuckoo lays eggs similar to those of a certain hostelero. But, despite being similar, the host bird has strategies to know eggs that are not theirs. Harvard University has developed software to investigate these strategies. It's called NatureFere and focuses on the model of egg shells or stains.

According to the developers, birds have tried to photograph what they see. For this purpose, birds have photographed the wavelengths they see and have used an algorithm to identify the stain model. A total of 689 eggs have been analyzed from the collection of the Museum of Natural History in London.

According to the set of models collected, three types of strategies have been identified, which can use birds to separate the eggs from the cucos. One consists of all the eggs of each breeding having the same stain model. The common Antzandobi, for example, has that strategy. Another strategy, such as carricero carracín, is the laying by the females of the same species of eggs with very different stain models. And the third strategy is that the model is very complex: the egg shell of the winter cabin, for example, has very dispersed spots.

With these three strategies, the other birds go through the trick of the cuckoo: they realize that in the nest there is an egg that is not theirs and sometimes they throw it.