Opinion Birds and the art of the steal

Perhaps the most overquoted military theorist is Carl von Clausewitz: “War is the continuation of politics by other means.” The idea is that war is about achieving some clearly defined political objective, if diplomacy doesn’t do the trick. Why not apply this to other fields of human activity? Growing one’s business by other means might involve, at one end, snapping up promising start-ups, and at the other end, a few greased palms and cooked books with a side of intellectual property theft. Skulduggery here is a shortcut, the product of a rational cost-benefit calculus: Why invest time and resources to build something when someone else has saved you the trouble?

As anyone who has had their lunch snatched by an enterprising crow can attest to, birds are perfectly acquainted with the art of the steal. Magpies’ acumen is proverbial. Cuckoos take a different but equally rational approach: What scientists call “brood parasitism” is an evolutionary strategy to offload the cost of raising their young. Now, a study has found that another set of hard-beaked competitors has entered the rat race: Hawaiian honeycreepers, which are constantly engaged in stealing material from each other’s nests for their own. So far, three separate species have been found engaging in this banditry, but identity doesn’t seem to matter to them — it’s a war of every bird against every bird.

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The explanation is that nests take a lot of effort to build, and the honeycreepers live in a tough environment where finding materials is hard. Well, there’s always an explanation.