'Love hormone' guides young songbirds in choice of 'voice coach'

Oxytocin, the so-called "love hormone," plays a key role in the process of how a young zebra finch learns to sing by imitating its elders, suggests a new study by neuroscientists at Emory University. Scientific Reports has ...

Social connection drives learning in bird brain

Juvenile zebra finches learn songs directly from a tutor—usually their father—through a social interaction that keeps them motivated and on-task. Young birds who simply hear the songs through a speaker, without the tutor's ...

Zebra finch males sing in dialects and females pay attention

Male zebra finches learn their song by imitating conspecifics. To stand out in the crowd, each male develops its own unique song. Because of this individual-specific song, it was long assumed that dialects do not exist in ...

Not silent yet; the shifting sounds of spring

Natural sounds, and bird song in particular, play a key role in building and maintaining our connection with nature—but a major new study reveals that the sounds of spring are changing, with dawn choruses across North America ...

page 2 from 11