Several experimental results support the existence of costs associated with exaggerated begging behaviour, which are assumed by some theoretical models of honest signalling in parent-offspring communication. However, to understand how honest begging behaviour is evolutionarily maintained in nature, the long-term cost-benefit output associated with exaggerated signals should also be estimated. A...

Animal signals are hypothesized to be costly in order to honestly reflect individual quality. Offspring solicitation signals given by nestling birds are thought to have evolved to advertise either need or individual quality. We tested the potential role of testosterone (T) in controlling the intensity of these signals by measuring begging behaviour as: (i) duration of the begging display and (i...

Nigeria is among the major countries contending with social problem of street begging. The pervasiveness has continually placed it at front burner scholarly engagements and intellectual discourse. However, despite existence abundant literature on phenomenon begging, epistemological methodological issues typically embedded in process data elicitation from beggars are yet to command adequate atte...

Ant larvae may increase their fitness by trying to increase their food intake, since adult morphology and quality depend on nutritional conditions during juvenile development. As larvae are legless and dependent upon workers, some sort of begging signal can be expected. We studied larval begging behaviour in the ant Gnamptogenys striatula. Workers preferentially fed larvae that were either near...

We used infrared imaging to test whether the energetic cost of begging is observable in changes in body surface temperature (Ts) of young House Sparrow nestlings (Passer domesticus), and whether Ts is affected by nestling rank. Begging had a mixed effect on Ts, increasing it slightly at first, but decreasing it when hungry nestlings begged more vigorously. This mixed effect may result from heat...

In some species, dependent offspring join foraging providers and beg for food. Mobile offspring might benefit from evolving begging signals adapted to the different situations they are exposed to, but this possibility has been ignored. In cooperatively breeding meerkats (Suricata suricatta), dependent offspring use a repertoire of several begging calls when joining foraging adults. We found tha...

In species where young are provisioned by both parents, males commonly contribute less to parental care than females, and are less responsive to variation in begging rates. Similar differences in the care of young occur among adults in cooperative breeders, but fewer studies have investigated whether these are associated with differences in responsiveness. Here, we present results from a playba...

1. Current theory suggests that by responding to offspring food solicitation, or begging, parents improve the efficiency by which they convert parental investment into offspring fitness. However, the proximate mechanisms of this conversion are not entirely clear. One potential function of responding to begging is to maintain feeding regularity. Feeding at regular time intervals may improve offs...

Recent models of parent-offspring communication suggest that nestling begging reliably reflects food requirements, and therefore should increase with nestling need. Need may be affected by short-term variations in hunger, as well as by long-term factors such as relative size, growth rate and body condition. In the present study, the brood sizes of barn swallows were manipulated to create differ...