In the 1924 book Beau Geste, and the many film versions that followed it, the climax of the action takes place in the desert at Fort Zinderneuf where members of the French Foreign Legion are attempting to hold off an Arab  attack.

‘As each man fell, throughout that long and awful day, he had propped him up, wounded or dead, set the rifle in its place, fired it, and bluffed the Arabs that every wall and every embrasure and loophole of every wall was fully manned.’ (Wren 1924).

Still from the 1939 film

Learning Many Songs

Many species of birds have larger repertoires of songs than seems strictly necessary. In an attempt to explain this John Krebs suggested what he called the Beau Geste Hypothesis. (Krebs 1977)

He describes the use by an individual, usually male, bird of a variety of different songs as an attempt to increase the apparent density of occupation of a territory and so discourage the interest of rivals. Singing the same song from many locations within the territory would most likely be interpreted as a single bird moving about, but singing different songs from lots of locations would more likely be interpreted as coming from a number of different birds. In effect different songs add verisimilitude to the individuality of the singer.

Being a good Darwinian, Krebs suggests that having a large repertoire of songs has an evolutionary advantage, because it allows birds to defend larger territories than would otherwise be the case.

Discussion

Kreb’s hypothesis is that a large repertoire of songs allows a bird to falsely indicate a higher density of territory occupation than there is in reality. I think it not unreasonable to map density to numbers of individuals in the territory and say that the territory being defended has a larger number of competitive occupiers than is actually the case.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to my brother-in-law Tony Payne whose PhD was in animal behaviour and was latterly Professor of Anatomy at Glasgow University who told me this story, see also Cafetières, Disorder, Chaos and Anarchy

Bibliography

Krebs, J. R. (1977) The significance of song repertoires: The Beau Geste hypothesis. Animal Behaviour 25: 475-478

Wren, P. C. (1924) Beau Geste. John Murray

Yasukawa, K., Searcy, W. A. (1985) Song repertoires and density assessment in red-winged blackbirds: further tests of the Beau Geste hypothesis. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. Vol. 16, Issue 2, 171-175