Nestling birds recognize their local song 'dialect'

A recent study, published in Current Biology, led by researchers at Stockholm University and Uppsala University, has shown that juvenile songbirds react to hearing the songs they will eventually produce as adults, even when ...

Urban traffic noise causes song learning deficits in birds  

Traffic noise leads to inaccuracies and delays in the development of song learning in young birds. They also suffer from a suppressed immune system, which is an indicator of chronic stress. A new study by researchers of the ...

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 ...

Teaching wild birds to sing a new tune

Like toddlers learning to speak, young birds learn to sing by listening to the voices of adults. Now, researchers reporting in Current Biology on October 4 have shown for the first time that they could teach young sparrows ...

Is there such a thing as an objectively 'bad' song?

Everyone has a song which irritates the hell out of them – but Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus was found by one 2005 study to have been nominated most often as "the worst song ever". The authors, academics from New ...

How birds learn

Songbirds can acquire new abilities both through observation and through trial and error. However, skills acquired with the latter method are more easily adapted to new situations, as scientists at ETH and the University ...

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