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from the tweety dept. [article] A research team was surprised to find it could teach juvenile birds a jumble of computer generated tunes. But the musical rules of humans apparently make no sense to older avians, as the birds' impressive flexibility in youth gave way to their own rigid preferences when breeding became a priority. Paradoxically, months of wayward early learning seems to have little impact on the birds' ability to sing the melodies of their species correctly. The scientists hope this puzzling course of events will help them understand how birds develop songs. "The most surprising thing is that the birds were able to imitate, and then paradoxically they abandon this imitation in adulthood," said co-author Tim Gardner, of Rockefeller University, US. "We don't have a full answer for this. But birds that go through this period of imitation might have a richer repertoire of syllables so the interaction between this early freedom and the later rules ends up creating a more diverse set of sounds in adulthood. It seems an excessive capacity for imitation, which is dropped when they grow up." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/4544777.stm < | >
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Bird language switches from liberal to conservative
