Nick Royle and Tom Pike discuss whether animals know how attractive they are. They gathered a group of females that showed clear, unambiguous preferences for males wearing red leg rings. They then showed male birds to them under four sets of experimental conditions. First, they gave the males a red leg ring, and showed them to females on the other side of a transparent partition. When the males and females could see each other, they gave each other more attention when males were wearing their attractive red leg ring-the female gave positive feedback and the male responded by courting her more. When the males wore green leg rings they got less positive feedback and spent less time courting. But when the females did not respond to the males because they could not see the amount of time the males spend courting was not related to which ring he was wearing
