Clever birds figure out how to trick others into raising their kids A common Cuckoo chick in Reed Wablers nest waits to be fed with its mouth wide open, in this undated file photo. Getty Images — ...

A lot of us will change our wardrobe to fit into a crowd, and the brood parasite known as the cuckoo has used evolution to do the same thing. Because cuckoos lay their eggs in the nest of a host bird, ...

Cuckoos exhibit a remarkable survival strategy by foregoing nest building, a costly endeavor. Instead, they cleverly deposit ...

Many cuckoos like to outsource their parenting. These medium-sized birds lay their eggs in the nests of other bird species, tricking the unsuspecting hosts into raising their chicks. In some cuckoo ...

Cuckoos – which lay their eggs in nests of other birds – have higher speciation rates when they lay their eggs in a broader range of host bird species’ nests, a new study reports. This higher ...

This story appears in the January 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine. For the care and feeding of its offspring, the common cuckoo outsources. When she’s ready to lay an egg, a female Cuculus ...

Easter eggs are wonderfully colorful and sometimes full of chocolate. While it remains an absolute mystery of nature how and why a rabbit lays and delivers these piebald, tasty eggs to children on ...

Egg 'signatures' will allow drongos to identify cuckoo 'forgeries' almost every time, study finds. African cuckoos may have met their match with the fork-tailed drongo, which scientists predict can ...

African cuckoos may have met their match with the fork-tailed drongo, which scientists predict can detect and reject cuckoo eggs from their nest on almost every occasion, despite them on average ...