Birdsong.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Have your ever felt as happy as a lark, feathered your nest or taken someone under your wing? As we watch birds, we cannot help but be struck by their uncannily familiar behaviors - singing, nest building, caring for their young - to name just a few. Songbirds - the oscine suborder of perching birds that constitute roughly half (∼4,000) of all known avian species - are noted for the songs that males and sometimes both sexes in this group sing to court mates and defend territory from rivals. Birdsongs contain several to many acoustically distinct syllables, typically organized into a stereotyped phrase, and span the same audio bandwidth that we exploit for speech and music, making them easy for us to hear and appreciate. Consequently, eavesdropping humans long ago detected the most striking parallel between songbirds and humans: juvenile songbirds learn to sing in a manner similar to a child learning to speak.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Mooney, R
Published Date
- October 24, 2022
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 32 / 20
Start / End Page
- R1090 - R1094
PubMed ID
- 36283371
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1879-0445
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1016/j.cub.2022.07.006
Language
- eng
Conference Location
- England