Monday, May 7, 2007

How Do Birds Learn to Sing?


© 2007 Donna L Watkins - Boat-tailed Grackle
FL Welcome Center
In contrast to most animals, songbirds, like humans, learn the vocalizations they make. Studying how they do it may shed light on how people learn to speak. Like a French child raised by English-speaking parents, a young songbird raised by a different species of adult, or with recordings of a different species, will end up learning the “wrong” song, and will produce only an odd, improvised tune if it is raised in isolation.

A vocal non-learner such as a phoebe or a dove, on the other hand, will sing its species’ correct song even if it’s brought up by another kind of bird, or by none at all.

Read the entire article at the NWF website.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's incredible. There was a debate and both were correct!

SM said...

I just read the short piece above, "How Do Birds Learn to Sing?" There's a link to NWF website to read the rest of the article, but I can't find it there. Where can I read more on this subject? I find it fascinating and I can see parallels to the "dark" places in our lives where God teaches US to sing, so we can then sing in the light.
Thank you for any help you can give.
Susan

sharingsunshine said...

They archived the article so it has a different link: Singing in the Brain

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