May 2022, ScientificAmerican.com 43FROM OUR ARCHIVES
Birds Can Tell Us a Lot about Human Language. Adam Fishbein; ScientificAmerican.com,
February 2, 2018.
The Quantum Nature of Bird Migration. Peter J. Hore and Henrik Mouritsen; April 2022.
scientificamerican.com/magazine/sainformation from the order of the moves. In stead the audience
is focused on the acrobatics, rhythm and variety of the move-
ments rather than the sequences in which they occur. It may be
the same for birdsong. From the perspective of the bird produc-
ing the song, getting the sequence right can be essential for get-
ting the “moves” right. But for the bird listening, what is most
important may be the individual moves themselves.
This is not to say there aren’t certain significant parallels
between birdsong and human speech or music. The ability to take
heard sounds and reproduce them as humans do in speech and
birds do in song, a feat termed vocal learning, is actually quite
rare in the animal kingdom. Our closest living relatives, chimpan-
zees, do not appear to be vocal learners, nor do any other primates.
Even those mammals that do show some vocal-learning ability—
bats, whales, elephants, seals and sea lions—do not achieve the
same level of vocal mimicry as humans and some birds (song-
birds, parrots and hummingbirds, to be specific; other groups,
including pigeons, chickens and owls, are not vocal learners). Even
more amazingly, researchers such as Erich Jarvis of the Rocke-
feller University have shown that similar neural pathways and
molecular mechanisms control vocal learning and production in
songbirds and hu mans, a product of convergent evolution. In this
way, we can learn a lot about human vocal communication from
studying birds. But the songs they produce do not appear to be
the music or language to their ears that we might imagine.
We still have a lot to learn about how birds perceive birdsong.
Several studies have shown evidence that bird calls convey spe-
cific information about things in their environment such as food
or predators, but we do not yet know whether anything similarly
meaningful exists in birdsong, perhaps carried in the fine struc-
ture. Neither do we know how birds perceive the fine structure
of song in natural environments, where sound can bounce off
trees and buildings and has to compete with a cacophony of envi-
ronmental noise.
Additionally, recent work has shown that, contrary to tradi-
tional views of birdsong as a strictly male behavior, female birds
commonly sing, too. This discovery raises the question of whether
male and female birds may listen to song differently. Moreover,
in many tropical species, male and female partners sing highly
intertwined duets that can even sound to human ears like a sin-
gle continuous song. How do birds manage to listen for their turn
to sing while making sure to produce the correct notes?
The next time you hear a birdsong, try thinking of it less like
a catchy melody or a simple sentence and more like a fast-mov-
ing, precisely coordinated dance of the syrinx—one that’s poten-
tially as rich in emotion and meaning as human language or
music but expressed in a different way.BUDGERIGARS