Birds communicate in a variety of ways through their calls



There are examples of birds being highly intelligent, such as crows

being able to count by vocalization . For a long time, it was thought that birds could not talk, but research into bird vocalizations has revealed that they communicate vocally through their cries.

How Scientists Started to Decode Birdsong | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/how-scientists-started-to-decode-birdsong



Sonia Kleindorfer, a biologist and avian ecologist who is director of the Konrad

Lorenz Center for Behavioral and Cognitive Research in Austria, thought when she was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania that 'only male songbirds sing, and females don't. If females did sing, there must be some mistake.' However, after taking a research position at Flinders University in Australia, she confirmed that female songbirds also sing, and has since been conducting research into 'bird vocalizations.'

As an example, Kleindorfer set up cameras and microphones in wren nests to observe them. He discovered that female wrens sing lullabies while incubating their eggs in the nest. Chicks in the embryonic stage inside the eggs have underdeveloped ears and should be unable to hear, so Kleindorfer wondered, 'Why would they behave in a way that would attract predators?' However, when he compared the calls made by females while incubating eggs with the cries made by the chicks after they hatched, he found that they matched.

The begging calls of the chicks varied depending on the nest they were raised in, suggesting that the birds were learning their mother's voice while still in the egg. Experiments in which the eggs were moved to a different nest also confirmed that the hatched chicks would imitate the voices of their nest parents, rather than their biological parents.

Embryonic Learning of Vocal Passwords in Superb Fairy-Wrens Reveals Intruder Cuckoo Nestlings: Current Biology
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01125-6

This was a paradigm shift, Kleindorfer says, because songbirds were previously thought to learn their songs from their fathers. The same process has since been confirmed in many songbird species.

The fact that animals communicate using different sounds was confirmed in the 1970s by Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth in field experiments with savanna monkeys living in Kenya. In the experiments, it was found that savanna monkeys used different sounds to warn off different predators, such as eagles, snakes, and leopards. Although young individuals sometimes misidentify the corresponding sounds, as they grow up they learn and begin to use the correct sounds.

The results of this research have been published in a paper and in a book titled 'How Monkeys See the World.'

Amazon | How Monkeys See the World: Inside the Mind of Another Species | Cheney, Dorothy L., Seyfarth, Robert M. | Apes & Monkeys



It has been confirmed that Siberian jays also make three different calls when they are perched on a branch, when they are flying, and when they are attacking prey.

The University of Tokyo is also home to the world's first laboratory specializing in the field of 'zoolinguistics,' which explores the meaning of these animal sounds and gestures, how they help with survival and reproduction, and what cognitive abilities they may have evolved to provide.

Suzuki Lab
https://www.animallinguistics.org/

Suzuki Laboratory, Animal Linguistics Division | Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo
https://www.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/research/suzuki_lab.html

Associate Professor Suzuki Toshitaka of the laboratory conducted research on the calls of great tits during his university days and discovered that they form words and sentences, and that they also make gestures using their wings.

Toshitaka Suzuki 'Vocal Communication and Cognitive Development in Birds' | Geographical Ecology Laboratory, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Toho University
https://www.lab.toho-u.ac.jp/sci/bio/geoeco/research/2007/suzuki.html

There are also projects underway to use AI to decipher non-human communication.

Earth Species Project
https://www.earthspecies.org/

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in Creature, Posted by logc_nt