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When you’re looking for a table in a crowded cafeteria, you probably give wide berth¹ to the family that sounds like it’s sharing a big dish of whooping² cough. Well, not if you’re a house finch³, particularly a male. Because a study in the journal Biology Letters shows that male finches actually prefer feeding near males who are visibly ill.

Finches don’t get whooping cough. But they are susceptible⁴ to infection with something called Mycoplasma gallisepticum, a bug⁵ that leaves them lethargic⁶ and sporting a bad case of conjunctivitis, otherwise known as pinkeye. The disease is quite contagious⁷ and can be passed from one finch to another while dining beak⁸-to-beak. All the more reason, you’d think, for healthy birds to avoid sitting next to someone with crusty red peepers. Yet male house finches, when given a choice, opt⁹ to break breadcrumbs with males who are obviously under the weather.

Why risk catching¹⁰ a nasty infection when all you really want to catch is a quick bite? Because males infected with Mycoplasma tend to be less aggressive. So eating with the infirm means you’re more likely to wind up with seed in your beak than a beak in your eye.

——Karen  Hopkin