Mimicry is widespread in the animal kingdom. Parasitic cuckoos can reduce the risk of their offspring being rejected by employing morphological and egg mimicry. Female common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) can deceive their hosts by mimicking sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) calls, thus improving brood parasitism success. However, few experiments have confirmed the hypothesis that female cuckoos can successfully mimic sparrowhawk calls. We used two populations of wild free-range chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus), which are not cuckoo hosts, to study the effects of four different types of bird calls on their anti-predatory behavior. Results showed that both female cuckoo and sparrowhawk calls elicited vigilance and escape responses from chickens, while the chickens did not respond to either male common cuckoo or Oriental turtle dove (Streptopelia orientalis) calls. This suggests that female cuckoo calls can not only deceive their hosts, but also successfully deceive their non-host birds. Our study further confirms the accuracy with which female cuckoos can mimic sparrowhawk calls.

中文翻译：

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雌性杜鹃呼吁引起警惕并逃避野生散养鸡的反应

模仿在动物界很普遍。寄生杜鹃可以通过形态学和卵模拟来降低其后代被排斥的风险。雌性杜鹃 (Cuculus canorus) 可以通过模仿雀鹰 (Accipiter nisus) 的叫声来欺骗宿主，从而提高巢寄生的成功率。然而，很少有实验证实雌性杜鹃可以成功模仿雀鹰叫声的假设。我们使用了两个不是杜鹃宿主的野生散养鸡 (Gallus gallusdomesticus) 来研究四种不同类型的鸟类呼叫对其反捕食行为的影响。结果表明，雌性杜鹃和雀鹰的叫声都引起了鸡的警惕和逃避反应，而鸡对雄性杜鹃或东方斑鸠（Streptopelia orientalis）的叫声没有反应。这表明，雌性杜鹃的叫声不仅可以欺骗宿主，还可以成功地欺骗非宿主鸟类。我们的研究进一步证实了雌性杜鹃模仿雀鹰叫声的准确性。