If you’ve been around the internet long enough,   you’ve probably heard of the  “conspiracy” that birds aren’t real.

It’s not a real conspiracy  theory. It was started as a joke.

But, some birds are indeed not real! Of course, there are those  duck decoys that hunters use,   but I’m talking about the fake  birds that scientists use. Sometimes, they even make people dress up  like birds.

All for good science reasons! So here are six ways that  scientists use fake birds   to do real research about our feathered friends. [♪ INTRO] We’ll get to the people dressing up like  birds for science, later. But first, decoys.

During the breeding season, birds can  get very defensive of their territories. And researchers can take advantage of  this by using dummy birds to lure the   real ones into a particular  spot. Like, say, a trap.

Territorial nesting birds will swoop in to try to   either shoo these invaders  away, or fight them off. And at least in some cases, birds  actually seem to be more aggressive   toward dummies than towards live,  caged birds that were used as lures. As for what kind of dummy you want to use, well,   researchers have turned to a  bunch of different sources… from 3D printed models covered  in custom-printed stickers,   to hand-carved construction insulation covered  in foam and the appropriate bird paint job.

But for the moment, let’s focus on one case study:   A research project that  started in California in 2014. Ornithologists repainted commercial purple  martin dummies to look like Swainson’s thrushes,   relatives of robins known  for their beautiful songs. Then, they used those fake thrushes to entice  actual thrushes into nets and safely catch them.

The team outfitted the captured birds with  devices that recorded their movements. When the birds came back the next  spring, scientists recaptured them,   recovered the tracking devices,  and downloaded all the data. The result?

Crucial information about  where the thrushes spend the winter,   and what hazards they might  face during their migration. None of this might sound very fun for the captured  birds, even if that capture is only temporary. But the various nets and traps used in these  kinds of studies don’t harm them at all,   they’re released quickly, and  the data that scientists collect   all goes towards improving conservation efforts.

And hey, maybe the bird gets  something out of it, too. Like a fun alien abduction story  to tell his mates. Except they all   know the aliens are real, native  to the planet, and everywhere.

Using dummies to piss off aggressive,  territorial birds doesn’t just help   scientists catch them. It can  also help us study aggression. Tree swallows are songbirds that love  to live in human-provided nest boxes,   making it easy for scientists  to study their behavior.

Researchers in Indiana wanted to see  how expectant mothers…in other words,   females incubating their  eggs…would react to intruders. Not just behaviour, but their biology:   how do hormones and gene expression  drive seasonal changes in aggression? So in 2018, they placed dummy female tree  swallows at the entrances of occupied nest boxes.

To make these invasions more realistic, they  also played recordings of tree swallows fighting   from speakers under the nest boxes. Then, they  waited to see what the nesting females would do. The resident momma birds’ reactions ranged from   ignoring the dummy birds completely,  to dive-bombing and pecking them.

And while some female tree swallows  were moderately aggressive throughout   the breeding season, others showed  huge changes in their behavior,   starting out really aggressive while  establishing their territories,   but then becoming more chill as they  laid their eggs and raised chicks. In another study done in 2015, scientists  used dummies to find out whether noise   pollution affected the territorial behavior of  a South American bird called the great kiskadee. They used plush decoys…like kiskadee  stuffed animals!...to test the reactions   of birds in both noisy urban areas  and quiet rural areas in Brazil.

They found that the noisier the environment,   the slower the birds were to  react to the fake invaders. …and now I’m thinking of that trope where  you’ve got a person completely tuned out   to a disaster right behind them because they’ve  got headphones on…except that person is a bird. Sometimes, instead of being aggressive  toward each other, birds want to flock   together. Humans can take advantage of this  to convince them to hang out in safer places.

In Wyoming, staff from Grand Teton  National Park teamed up with middle   school students and a local artist in  2025, to create papier-mâché versions   of greater sage-grouse. The species isn’t quite  endangered, yet, but it’s worth keeping an eye on. The local sage-grouse have been performing  their group mating displays near an   airport.

Which, as it might sound, is not  particularly safe. Between 1990 and 2013,   32 birds were killed in collisions with aircraft.   So the papier-mâché grouse were placed  in a safer field farther from the runway.   The hope is that real grouse will see them  there and decide to relocate and join them. This same technique can also convince seabirds,   which sometimes nest together in huge  colonies, to switch nesting locations.

In 2003, wooden replicas were used  in southeast Australia to attract   endangered little terns to a new, safe  breeding site on the coast. And away   from the habitat destruction that  had threatened existing colonies. Meanwhile, way up in Maine, a conservation  initiative called Project Puffin has used   decoys to expand the breeding  population of Atlantic puffins.

By the end of the nineteenth century,   puffins had been eliminated from all but one  of their nesting islands in Maine. And in 1902,   only a single nesting pair was still  returning to an island on Maine’s midcoast. Conservation efforts to restore these  nesting grounds started back in the 1970s,   and part of Project Puffin included placing  decoy puffins, as well as mirrors to make it   look like there were even more birds around, on  an uninhabited island called Eastern Egg Rock.

And it worked! The social birds  started recolonizing the area,   figuring that if they saw other puffins around,  it must be a safe place to raise a family. The project has been hailed as a huge  success story.

And as of 2023, there   are more than 1,300 breeding pairs of puffins  spread across several islands in the state. But before we get to our next fake bird to,  uh, motivate avian sperm donors…first, an ad. Thanks to our longtime sponsor, Brilliant,  for supporting this SciShow video!

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And you’ll get 20%  off an annual premium subscription. Captive breeding programs are a common tactic to  boost the populations of endangered species. But sometimes, captive individuals just aren’t very  interested in getting it on with each other… Or they are, but not with the “best” mate  from a genetic diversity standpoint.

If you’re trying to save a species from extinction,  you don’t want them turning into the Hapsburgs. Or should I say, Hapsbirds… This is why conservationists who manage  captive breeding programs sometimes turn   to artificial insemination.  Which means they need sperm. There are different methods of  collecting sperm from captive   male birds, and they can yield different results.

For example, some sperm gets mixed  in with the birds’ poop. So yes,   you can collect that poop  and filter out the sperm. Sperm harvested from bird poop is  lower-quality than what you can get   from — how would an expert put this?  — massaging the cloacal protuberance.

But perhaps the best way to mimic the natural  conditions of mating involves dummy female birds. Conservation workers in India  have successfully used this   tactic to breed critically endangered  birds called Great Indian bustards. These are huge birds that live in  India’s dry grasslands and shrublands,   and they’re iconic enough that they almost beat  out the peacock as the country’s national bird.

But their populations have plummeted  by over 80% in the last 50 years or so,   and urgent captive breeding was launched in 2013. The biologists in charge of the program  were worried that their male bustards would   get too stressed out by both moving to a new  breeding center and meeting a new lady friend. So instead, the scientists let  the males stay at home-sweet-home,   and introduced padded wooden dummies  that resembled a female bustard.

And, uh…squatting in just the right position. When a male eventually mounted  that dummy and ejaculated,   workers would swoop in to catch  its semen in a petri dish. They could then use the sperm to inseminate  the most genetically distinct females.

Chicks have already been born from  this, um, unusual form of courtship. And the Indian government is also working to  restore habitat for great Indian bustards,   with the hope that those chicks will  eventually be reintroduced into the wild. They might not have an alien abduction  to tell their new mates about,   but they’ll certainly have  an interesting backstory.

So far we’ve been talking about  bird decoys made from wood, foam,   or plastic… but here’s someone who turned himself  into a fanciful fake bird to make a point. In 2025, a former puppet-maker named Matt  Trevelyan walked 85 kilometers across northern   England in two days, wearing a realistic-looking  but enormous Eurasian curlew costume. And yes, he did make it himself  and nicknamed it “Cathy.” Trevelyan timed his walk to  coincide with World Curlew Day,   an effort to bring more attention  to the plight of this species.

Eurasian curlews are threatened by  habitat loss and climate change,   and their population in the UK has  declined by 48% in the last 25 years. By turning himself into a curlew,   Trevelyan hoped to raise both awareness  and money for curlew conservation efforts. Which is important, but not as direct as  our next group of bird dresser-uppers.

Because sometimes humans transform  themselves, or parts of themselves,   to teach baby birds how to be birds. Shortly after a baby bird hatches, it  imprints on the adult raising it. That is,   it learns to recognize that  adult as a member of its species.

This means that if a baby bird hatches  in captivity and is fed by humans,   it might decide that it is also a human. And if that baby bird is a member of an endangered  species and will someday be released into the   wild, thinking that it’s a human could interfere  with its ability to survive and reproduce. So biologists raising endangered birds  in captivity go to some wild lengths   to make sure that these babies know they’re birds.

One of the most endangered birds in  North America is the whooping crane.   And conservationists have been raising  baby whooping cranes in captivity since   the 1960s to boost the population of the species. The caretakers dress in white  coveralls…including hoods that   cover their faces…and feed their babies using  crane puppets that they wear on their hands. Biologists wearing crane costumes have  even given flying lessons to young,   captive-reared cranes using ultralight airplanes.

As humans are incapable of flight,  they trained the birds to follow a   tiny plane and its pilot as they  would a more experienced crane. Unfortunately, cranes raised this way seem  to have trouble reproducing in the wild. So, whooping crane experts are  also experimenting with having   them be raised by captive adult  cranes, or adopted by wild adults.

But these aren’t the only birds that have  been raised by human-sized fake birds. For example, puppet rearing methods are being used  with more vulnerable shoebill stork chicks in Africa. The shoebill puppets being used there were  even designed by a former Muppet puppeteer!

And of course, there’s the California  condor…the iconic endangered bird   whose chicks are fed with puppets as part of  captive breeding efforts to save the species. In the 1980s, all of the remaining wild  California condors…just 22 birds…were   captured in a last-ditch effort to  prevent them from going extinct. And after decades of careful captive breeding,  today there are over 300 condors flying free   in the skies again, thanks in part  to these puppet feeding techniques.

Despite all these examples of fake birds,   we here at SciShow can confirm  that birds are definitely real. But wild bird populations are  declining. In North America alone,   scientists estimate that there are about three  billion fewer birds now than there were in the   1970s.

And fake birds are one tool we  can use to help those real birds out. But if you’re planning on dressing  up like a bird to raise the baby you   found in your backyard, maybe  leave it to the professionals? [♪ OUTRO]