At this time of year, many of us are looking forward to giving and receiving gifts, but humans aren’t the only ones to give presents. From spiders to penguins, dolphins to bonobos, gift-giving is remarkably common in the animal kingdom, where it has been practiced for over 100 million years. Here are 10 of the animal kingdom’s best and most thoughtful gift givers.
10 animals that give gifts
Crows
Corvids are remarkably intelligent birds, known to form close relationships with the people who care for them. But in 2011, when Gabi Mann from Seattle started feeding the crows in her garden, she didn’t expect what happened next.
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The crows started to bring her gifts, including beads, buttons, paper clips and bits of sea glass, which they dropped onto the bird feeder platform. One time, the crows even brought her a tiny piece of metal with the word “best” printed on it. “I don’t know if they still have the part that says ‘friend’,” Gabi told the BBC.
Nor is Gabi alone. Dig a little deeper and there are other stories of people who were kind to crows, and then received thank you presents. They’re not always shiny keepsakes, however. Sometimes, corvids give people the sorts of presents they would give to each other, such as insects or dead baby birds. So not all crow gifts are keepers!
Scorpionflies
Lots of animals give gifts to their partner as part of a mating ritual. Scorpionflies do this. Males give females balls of spit, which they make with their salivary glands. The unusual gifts, which are rich in nutrients, are a delicacy for eating.
Females mate with multiple males but choose them one at a time, based on the size of their offering. Size, it seems, is important because females preferentially choose the males who gift the biggest spit balls.
She then consumes the spit ball during sex and allows the male to mate with her for as long as it takes to eat. The largest spit balls can take hours to polish off. This gives the lucky male more time to transfer his sperm and means also that the female is unable to mate with any other males during this time. This increases the probability of him fathering her offspring and helps to explain why the males invest so much time and energy in making their presents.
Dance flies
Nothing says let’s get this party started like a balloon. Dance flies, which are small, two-winged flies named for their elaborate courtship dances, often give females home-made balloons. Sometimes, these balloons have prey, such as aphids or midges, hidden inside them, but other times they are empty. And some are made from silk, and some are made from bubbles of spit.
You’d be forgiven for thinking, that like scorpionflies, female dance flies would choose to mate with the males who give the largest presents, but this is not always the case. In one species, Empis snoddyi, the biggest males with the most mating success, often make rather average, intermediate-sized balloons. It’s thought this is because there is a trade-off. If the balls are too large, they’re difficult for the males to carry. If they’re too small, however, they’re easily missed. So, when it comes to gifts, here, at least, bigger isn’t always better.
Great grey shrikes
Lots of birds give food gifts to potential mates in the hope of winning them over. Kingfishers give fish, hornbills give fruit and jays give insects, but none go to the extremes of the great grey shrike.
Males of this monochrome beauty, aptly known as the butcher bird, first kill their prey, which can include mice, toads and crayfish. Then they skewer it on sharp thorns and twigs to make to make a smorgasbord of artisan kebabs.
Although some readers might find this behaviour macabre, the ‘precopulatory display’ forms part of the bird’s courtship ritual. A well-stocked larder indicates that the male is a skilled hunter, capable of securing abundant food. Then, when breeding is underway, the kebab cache is plundered to provide food for the female and young.
Bonobos
Bonobos are infamously obsessed by sex. It is a central part of their social lives, used for everything from saying hello to resolving conflicts. Yet they are one of the few animal species who gift for reasons that don’t involve sex.
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In a 2013 study of 15 wild-born bonobos living in a sanctuary in Kinshasa, the primates had the opportunity to share apples and bananas with individuals they either did or didn’t know. The animals were keen to share with their friends but were even more keen to share with strangers.
At face value, this suggests that bonobo gifting is driven by the desire for social novelty. However, in another experiment, the same team found that the animals also helped strangers that they couldn’t interact with to obtain out-of-reach food. The conclusion? Bonobos are nice guys, who sometimes give altruistically and expect nothing in return.
Great crested grebes
It’s one of the UK’s finest wildlife spectacles. In spring, great crested grebes pair up and perform a courtship ritual called the “weed dance” or “water ballet.” These are tall, elegant birds, with a black, punky head dress and frilly russet ruff. They are seasonally monogamous, meaning they find new partners each breeding season.
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To affirm this bond, the members of each pair perform a routine worthy of the Strictly Come Dancing final. It is packed with synchronized movements, including head shaking, bill-dipping and preening. As the dance reaches its climax, the birds dive down and select a gift for their partner.
Then they rise to the surface, rush towards each other, stretch up to their full height, and present their offering – a beautiful beak-full of weed. It is the grebe equivalent of exchanging vows, and from that moment on they join forces to prepare for and raise their young.
Humpback dolphins
The Swiss Army penknife may be the epitome of a multi-functional present, but humpback dolphins give their own equivalent.
In northwestern Australia, males have been observed ripping large sea sponges off the ocean floor. They then swim to the surface and chuck them around, seemingly to impress the females.
If the females are disinterested, males up the ante. They curve their bodies into a U-shape, called a ‘banana pose,’ and play a trumpet-y tune through their blowhole. Then they don the sponge on their forehead and present it to their female of choice.
The gift is multifunctional for several reasons. First, it’s a jaunty hat. Second, it’s a nose-protector. Dolphins in the same region have been spotted balancing sponges on their snouts, which helps to protect the sensitive part from the rough sea floor when they nose around for fish. And third, it’s a sign that the male is a potential keeper. The sponges release toxic compounds when they are disturbed, so collecting them takes chutzpah.
Penguins
It’s a happy fact of life that you’re never more than one click away from a video of a penguin presenting a gift to its partner. Just search ‘penguin giving gift.’
Gentoo and Adélie penguins live in Antarctica, where if you want to find a present, there’s not much choice. But there are a lot of pebbles, which is fortunate because female penguins love them.
At the start of each breeding season, male penguins collect pebbles and use them to build a raised platform-style nest. Competition for the pebbles is fierce, so some individuals, infamously, steal them from neighboring nests. When they are ready to settle down, males present their female of choice with a pebble. If she rejects the gift, she is rejecting the male, but if she adds it to the nest, it is a sign of acceptance and commitment. Think of it less like a pebble, and more like an engagement ring!
Six-spot burnet moths
In the world of the six-spot burnet moth, nothing says I love you like a little bit of cyanide. Cyanide is highly toxic to most mammals, but the six-spot burnet moth both produces and contains the chemical. Along with its vivid red and black colour scheme, this has evolved to help protect the insect from predation.
Caterpillars of the moth acquire cyanide from their foodplants, but they are also ‘born’ with it. Adult male moths ‘gift’ the chemical to female moths in their sperm, but the amount of the chemical varies. Females can detect how much cyanide a potential suitor makes, and preferentially choose males that make more. This may seem unconventional to us, but it makes perfect evolutionary sense – the females are just trying to give their offspring the best head start in life.
Spiders
Presents are important, but don’t forget the gift wrap. Paratrechalea ornata doesn’t. The males of this spider, from South America, wrap up the presents that they give to woo females. Instead of paper, however, they use silk.
The gifts may look beautiful, but the males are sneaky. Wrapping hides the parcel’s contents. So, sometimes the males give valuable gifts, such as dead flies, and sometimes they give worthless ones, such as empty insect husks. It’s like putting an empty chocolate box inside a Fortnum & Mason bag.
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One study from 2015, found that 70% of gifts are duds. No matter. The wrapping keeps the female occupied as the male mounts and mates, but when the deception is discovered, she quickly terminates the encounter. And the moral of this story is… fancy wrapping is all well and good, but never skimp on the present!
