BIRDSONG AND LANGUAGE
Heard a dawn chorus of sorts the night before last (probably because I wasn't in London). It kicked off at around 4am. I hadn't heard one for a long time, I don't know why (time of year?/sleeping heavily?) but it was a tonic to lie in bed listening. I found the following birdsng info on a website. No great surprises but it’s all interesting. I can’t roll my Rs like a Frenchwoman for similar reasons a nightingale can’t cheep like a sparrow: when we were youngsters, we weren’t exposed to those particular sounds. Here are the best bits of the feature:
Auditory Memory
Songbirds appear to learn their songs. Young male nestlings listen to their fathers and other males of the species, then commit these songs to their auditory memories. This "sensory" phase seems critical for song production: young songbirds raised in isolation produce abnormal songs never heard in nature.
Babbling
When male songbirds reach puberty they begin to practice their vocal skills with soft, unstructured tweets and trills, comparable to the pre-linguistic babbling of human babies. Next they shift to louder vocalisations ("plastic" song) and finally to "crystallised" songs matching earlier memories.
Courtship
Most male songbirds rely on singing to woo members of the fairer sex (and to repel other males). Why is one bird's song more attractive than another's? It seems that size does matter - of the repertoire, that is. Females are more impressed by males with a larger variety of songs.
Environment
Social interaction affects song learning. During the early sensory phase, birds memorize more songs than they later crystallize. So which songs stick and which don't? Songs which are similar to neighbours' songs are retained, and those that are different are rejected. This compares to the way human infants "tune" their babbling according to their language environment.
Identification
Even without a "Hi, it's your mum", most of us would immediately recognize our mother over the phone. Humans are adept at recognizing individuals on the basis of voice alone. The female great tit can pick out her mate by the way he sings. Starlings also can distinguish the song of one bird from another.
Noam Chomsky
His view that human brains are "hard-wired" to learn language has parallel support among some bird researchers. When songbirds are raised in acoustic isolation, they later produce abnormal song - yet this "isolate" song still retains species-typical attributes such as notes per song and trilled syllables per song.
Perfect Pitch
In humans, it's rare to "name" a pitch like 'C' or 'G-sharp' – a skill known as absolute pitch. Songbirds rely extensively on absolute pitch to perceive and classify sound. Experiments with starlings show that birds also use relative pitch ("higher than" or "lower than"), which is the strategy most often employed by humans.
Quick Learner
Young songbirds can quickly memorize, and then imitate, songs they heard as nestlings. A baby song sparrow needs only 30 repetitions of a song to later produce the song. Nightingales are even faster learners - they need only hear 10–20 presentations of a song to learn it.
Syllable
The smallest "processing unit" used by songbirds appears to be the syllable. A male and female zebra finch were placed in side-by-side cages. Researchers then flashed a strobe light at various intervals to interrupt the male’s singing. He almost always stopped singing between syllables (a place of natural pause); only rarely was a syllable interrupted without being completed.
Turkey
Known for its distinctive "gobble” rather than for melodious song, the turkey does not belong to the order of songbirds (songbirds are “Passeriformes”, which account for about half of all living bird species). Nor does the chicken, quail, pigeon, or dove. For these birds, vocal behaviour appears to be inborn, not learned. When deafened as nestlings, these birds go on to develop normal "gobbles," "clucks," and "coos".
Use It or Lose It
Humans have a "critical period" for learning their native language; by adolescence, the ability to learn new languages closes off because we lose our sensitivity to phonetic contrasts. So too for some songbirds. Though often raised within earshot of one another, they tend to form early memories only for their own species' song.
Wingstroking
When female cowbirds are particularly pleased by the song of a male, they move their wings rapidly to and fro in appreciation - the avian equivalent to batting the eyelashes. Male cowbirds are then more likely to repeat the songs that receive such a reaction. This is further evidence that songbirds are "action-based" learners - their social experiences influence which innate songs will be crystallized and produced in adulthood.
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A wild songbird isolated from its kind, locked in a cage in a laboratory, singing distorted songs for a scientist... is an unhappy vision.
(All this from the John Hopkins University's website)
Heard a dawn chorus of sorts the night before last (probably because I wasn't in London). It kicked off at around 4am. I hadn't heard one for a long time, I don't know why (time of year?/sleeping heavily?) but it was a tonic to lie in bed listening. I found the following birdsng info on a website. No great surprises but it’s all interesting. I can’t roll my Rs like a Frenchwoman for similar reasons a nightingale can’t cheep like a sparrow: when we were youngsters, we weren’t exposed to those particular sounds. Here are the best bits of the feature:
Auditory Memory
Songbirds appear to learn their songs. Young male nestlings listen to their fathers and other males of the species, then commit these songs to their auditory memories. This "sensory" phase seems critical for song production: young songbirds raised in isolation produce abnormal songs never heard in nature.
Babbling
When male songbirds reach puberty they begin to practice their vocal skills with soft, unstructured tweets and trills, comparable to the pre-linguistic babbling of human babies. Next they shift to louder vocalisations ("plastic" song) and finally to "crystallised" songs matching earlier memories.
Courtship
Most male songbirds rely on singing to woo members of the fairer sex (and to repel other males). Why is one bird's song more attractive than another's? It seems that size does matter - of the repertoire, that is. Females are more impressed by males with a larger variety of songs.
Environment
Social interaction affects song learning. During the early sensory phase, birds memorize more songs than they later crystallize. So which songs stick and which don't? Songs which are similar to neighbours' songs are retained, and those that are different are rejected. This compares to the way human infants "tune" their babbling according to their language environment.
Identification
Even without a "Hi, it's your mum", most of us would immediately recognize our mother over the phone. Humans are adept at recognizing individuals on the basis of voice alone. The female great tit can pick out her mate by the way he sings. Starlings also can distinguish the song of one bird from another.
Noam Chomsky
His view that human brains are "hard-wired" to learn language has parallel support among some bird researchers. When songbirds are raised in acoustic isolation, they later produce abnormal song - yet this "isolate" song still retains species-typical attributes such as notes per song and trilled syllables per song.
Perfect Pitch
In humans, it's rare to "name" a pitch like 'C' or 'G-sharp' – a skill known as absolute pitch. Songbirds rely extensively on absolute pitch to perceive and classify sound. Experiments with starlings show that birds also use relative pitch ("higher than" or "lower than"), which is the strategy most often employed by humans.
Quick Learner
Young songbirds can quickly memorize, and then imitate, songs they heard as nestlings. A baby song sparrow needs only 30 repetitions of a song to later produce the song. Nightingales are even faster learners - they need only hear 10–20 presentations of a song to learn it.
Syllable
The smallest "processing unit" used by songbirds appears to be the syllable. A male and female zebra finch were placed in side-by-side cages. Researchers then flashed a strobe light at various intervals to interrupt the male’s singing. He almost always stopped singing between syllables (a place of natural pause); only rarely was a syllable interrupted without being completed.
Turkey
Known for its distinctive "gobble” rather than for melodious song, the turkey does not belong to the order of songbirds (songbirds are “Passeriformes”, which account for about half of all living bird species). Nor does the chicken, quail, pigeon, or dove. For these birds, vocal behaviour appears to be inborn, not learned. When deafened as nestlings, these birds go on to develop normal "gobbles," "clucks," and "coos".
Use It or Lose It
Humans have a "critical period" for learning their native language; by adolescence, the ability to learn new languages closes off because we lose our sensitivity to phonetic contrasts. So too for some songbirds. Though often raised within earshot of one another, they tend to form early memories only for their own species' song.
Wingstroking
When female cowbirds are particularly pleased by the song of a male, they move their wings rapidly to and fro in appreciation - the avian equivalent to batting the eyelashes. Male cowbirds are then more likely to repeat the songs that receive such a reaction. This is further evidence that songbirds are "action-based" learners - their social experiences influence which innate songs will be crystallized and produced in adulthood.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A wild songbird isolated from its kind, locked in a cage in a laboratory, singing distorted songs for a scientist... is an unhappy vision.
(All this from the John Hopkins University's website)
