Birds have time-honored traditions, too

What makes human cultural traditions unique? One common answer is that we are better copycats than other species, which allows us to pass our habits and ways of life down through the generations without losing or forgetting ...

Male Java sparrows may 'drum' to their songs

Male Java sparrows may coordinate their bill-clicking sounds with the notes of their song, according to a study published May 20, 2015 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Masayo Soma and Chihiro Mori from Hokkaido University, ...

Wildfires cause bird songs to change

A new study in The Auk: Ornithological Advances suggests that wildfires change the types of songs sung by birds living in nearby forests.

Clamorous city blackbirds

(Phys.org)—Animals have developed a variety of strategies for dealing with increasing noise pollution in their habitats. It is known, for example, that many urban birds sing at a high pitch to differentiate their song from ...

Song-learning neurons identified in songbirds

A group of brain cells, the corticobasal ganglia projecting neurons, are important for vocal learning in young birds, but not in adult birds, according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy ...

Birds invent new songs in evolutionary fast-forward

Native North Island saddlebacks have developed such distinctive new songs in the last 50 years that it is not clear if birds on one island recognise what their neighbors are singing about, a Massey University study shows.

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