«Is intelligence sexy? Female mountain chickadees think so. They find brains so attractive that they will cheat on their mates if a smarter male comes along. That’s the conclusion from a new study, published in the journal eLife, that found female mountain chickadees proactively sought out males that had better cognitive skills than the one back in their nest.» https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/science/cheating-chickadees-are-seduced-by-smarts.html Original paper: "Male chickadees with better spatial cognition sire more extra-pair young", Branch et al. 2026 https://elifesciences.org/reviewed-preprints/110905v1 #neuroscience #chickadees #birds