News in Brief Animals

Bird nest riddle: Which shape came first?

Don’t assume simple cup-shaped architecture evolved before roofed structures

warbling vireo in a cup nest

OPEN QUESTION  A new study questions the intuitively obvious idea that simple cup nests, like this one of a warbling vireo, evolved before nests with roofs.

Gary L. Clark/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

WASHINGTON — To human thinking, songbird nests now seem to have evolved backwards: The most distant ancestor probably built complex, roofed structures.