Can voice recognition technology identify a masked jihadi?

The latest video of a masked Islamic State jihadist apparently speaking with a British accent led to him being tentatively identified as Muslim convert Siddhartha Dhar from East London. Voice recognition experts were reportedly ...

A common mechanism for human and bird sound production

When birds and humans sing it sounds completely different, but now new research reported in the journal Nature Communications shows that the very same physical mechanisms are at play when a bird sings and a human speaks.

Researchers reveal acoustic complexity of chickadee songs

Songbirds join humans in the select few animal groups that are "vocal learners"—that is, they must learn from adults of their own species to develop a normal ability to speak (or sing, as the case may be). Because the brain ...

Study hints at why parrots are great vocal imitators

An international team of scientists led by Duke University researchers has uncovered key structural differences in the brains of parrots that may explain the birds' unparalleled ability to imitate sounds and human speech.

Genes tell story of birdsong and human speech

His office is filled with all sorts of bird books, but Duke neuroscientist Erich Jarvis didn't become an expert on the avian family tree because of any particular interest in our feathered friends. Rather, it was his fascination ...

International team maps 'big bang' of bird evolution

The genomes of modern birds tell a story of how they emerged and evolved after the mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs and almost everything else 66 million years ago. That story is now coming to light, thanks to an ...

By studying animal behaviour, we gain an insight into our own

In the field of animal behaviour, there is one topic that is almost guaranteed to get your study in the popular press: showing how an animal behaves just like humans. This can be solving problems, using tools, acting pessimistically ...

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