David Cooper

I mean, this mirrors the last 10,000 years of human history too.

And honestly, I'm not surprised.

Are the females doing different stuff with the nest materials than the males?

And can a female override the male's preferences?

I have to ask at least one serious question from like a conservation perspective.

Does understanding how animals use or ignore nest materials, how they engage with each other socially, these birds, does this help us with any conservation efforts?

You basically took the words out of my mouth.

Like here you are messing around with a bunch of pink string and nest materials, but there's these big questions that apply too.

The tension though in these birds between individuality for ones who kind of insist on a color and just want to focus on their nest, and then the other ones that kind of conform to the flock.

Speak to me more about that.

Julia, if you could build a nest, what color would it be?

Maybe orange for me.

Well, Julia Self is an animal cognition researcher at the University of Alberta.

Julia, thanks for coming on the show, sharing your research.

This has been a lot of fun.

Thank you very much.

This is a fascinating story.

Did they name him Punch and then he got punched?

Or did they name him Punch after he got punched?

Because that would be pretty nasty of the zookeepers.