With its complex interweaving of symbols, structure, and meaning, human language stands apart from other forms of animal communication. But where did it come from? A new paper suggests that researchers look to bird songs and monkey calls to understand how human language might have evolved from simpler, preexisting abilities.
A Yale-led scientific team has produced the most comprehensive family tree for birds to date, connecting all living bird species — nearly 10,000 in total — and revealing surprising new details about t...
Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn't the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating. Winner of the YouTube Play Guggenheim Biennial Festival.
Married people may pledge to stay faithful through good times and bad, but birds sing a different tune -- when weather is severe or uncertain, birds are more likely to stray from their mates, says a new study.
As surprising as it seems, birds know how to use data from their social environment to maximize their chances of reproduction. Frédérique Dubois, a professor at the Université de Montréal Department of Biological Sciences, has already demonstrated that female Zebra Finches will favour a male chosen by another female. Dubois refers to this as imitation and the use of “public information” in choosing a mate.
With good lighting and a little luck, amateur videographers can use inexpensive digital cameras to transform blurred flight into breathtaking glimpses of animal behavior.
What made Alfred Hitchcock's birds go bananas and start pecking out the eyeballs of the good people of Bodega Bay, California? Scientists think they've finally figured it out.
Creatures on Earth have annual cycles consisting of life history stages of breeding, moult and migration. For some, moon cycles influence their periodic behavior, particularly in the case of birds.
(PhysOrg.com) -- During a presentation at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's 71st annual Meeting in Las Vegas, researchers Gareth Dyke and Darren Naish from the University of Southampton presented their findings of the first known Mesozoic...
The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis about the effect of intelligence on individual preferences and values may be applicable to other, nonhuman species.
To learn its signature melody, the male songbird uses a trial-and-error process to mimic the song of its father, singing the tune over and over again, hundreds of times a day, making subtle changes in the pitch of the notes.
Scientists have uncovered the first evidence of a non-human species cultivating plants for use other than as food. Instead, bowerbirds propagate fruits used as decorations in their sexual displays.
This songbird breaks out the sampler to get a mate. And the superb lyrebird doesn't stop at mimicking other bird species — man-made noises just become part of the remix.
Even though typical dance-floor activity might suggest otherwise, humans generally demonstrate a remarkable capacity to synchronize their body movements in response to auditory stimuli.
How are you able to move through a dense forest or crowd, maximizing your speed while avoiding a collision? Intuition — something not easily computer-programmed.
Whether you’re listening to Puccini’s Madam Butterfly or pop star sensation Adele’s latest hit single, studies have shown there are certain musical patterns that are common not only to various genres, but also across cultures.
Quantum mechanics is usually associated with weird and counterintuitive phenomena we can't observe in real life. But it turns out that quantum processes can occur in living organisms, too, and with very concrete consequences. Some species of birds, for example, use quantum mechanics to navigate. And as Plus found out at a conference on quantum physics and the nature of reality, which took place in Oxford in September, studying these little creatures' quantum compass may help us achieve the holy grail of computer science: building a quantum computer.
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