Next, the zebra finches were placed, one at a time, inside a chamber and listened to sounds as part of a reward system. At first, half the birds were tested on memorizing songs, while the other half were assessed on distance or contact calls. In a two-part experiment, 20 captive zebra finches were trained to distinguish between different birds and their vocalizations.
These days, Theunissen keeps a few dozen zebra finches in aviaries on and around campus, 20 of which were used on this latest experiment. “They don’t want to separate from the flock, and so, if one of them gets lost, they might call out ‘Hey, Ted, we’re right here.’ Or, if one of them is sitting in a nest while the other is foraging, one might call out to ask if it’s safe to return to the nest.” “They have what we call a ‘fusion fission’ society, where they split up and then come back together,” Theunissen said. Their songs are typically mating calls, while their distance or contact calls are used to identify where they are, or to locate one another. Zebra finches usually travel around in colonies of 50 to 100 birds, flying apart and then coming back together. Their teamwork yielded groundbreaking findings about the communication skills of zebra finches. “For animals, the ability to recognize the source and meaning of a cohort member’s call requires complex mapping skills, and this is something zebra finches have clearly mastered,” Theunissen said.Ī pioneer in the study of bird and human auditory communication for at least two decades, Theunissen acquired a fascination and admiration for the communication skills of zebra finches through his collaboration with UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Julie Elie, a neuroethologist who has studied zebra finches in the forests of their native Australia. As a result, they found that the birds, which mate for life, performed even better than anticipated. Theunissen and fellow researchers sought to gauge the scope and magnitude of zebra finches’ ability to identify their feathered peers based purely on their singular sounds. “The amazing auditory memory of zebra finches shows that birds’ brains are highly adapted for sophisticated social communication,” said study lead author Frederic Theunissen, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology, integrative biology and neuroscience. Moreover, they can remember each other’s unique vocalizations for months and perhaps longer, the findings suggest. Like humans who can instantly tell which friend or relative is calling by the timbre of the person’s voice, zebra finches have a near-human capacity for language mapping. In findings just published in the journal Science Advances, these boisterous, red-beaked songbirds, known as zebra finches, have been shown to pick one another out of a crowd (or flock) based on a particular peer’s distinct song or contact call.
That’s because they can rapidly memorize the signature sounds of at least 50 different members of their flock, according to new research from UC Berkeley.
#Different zebra sounds tv
If songbirds could appear on “ The Masked Singer” reality TV competition, zebra finches would likely steal the show. Study finds that zebra finches possess superior auditory memory.
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