Cleanliness is next to sexiness for golden-collared manakins in Panama

Few of us would find a marriage proposal made amidst dirty dishes and messy clutter particularly romantic, but we are not the only creatures who realize that cleaning up your act may improve your chances of attracting a mate. Juvenile male golden-collared manakins who received extra testosterone were stimulated to clean up their display area before performing for females, according to research at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama. The research team’s results, published in the journal Animal Behavior, showed that tidiness during courtship is influenced, but not determined exclusively, by hormones.