Aussie bird first non-human to have language

Scientists studying the chestnut-crowned babbler have shown that the species uses a repertoire of sounds that on their own are meaningless but convey certain messages when combined.

Scientists studying the chestnut-crowned babbler have shown that the species uses a repertoire of sounds that on their own are meaningless but convey certain messages when combined.

Published Jul 2, 2015

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London - A small gregarious bird in the Australian outback has been found to communicate using a simple form of language - the first species other than humans known to do so.

Scientists studying the chestnut-crowned babbler have shown that the species uses a repertoire of sounds that on their own are meaningless but convey certain messages when combined.

Although bird songs have different meanings, this is the first time scientists have been able to show specific messages can be formed from a repertoire of sounds, much like the phonemes or individual sounds that make up human words, the researchers said.

“This is the first time that the capacity to generate new meaning from rearranging meaningless elements has been shown to exist outside of humans,” said Simon Townsend of the University of Zurich, a co-author of the study in Plos Biology.

“Although the two babbler bird calls are structurally very similar, they are produced in totally different behavioural contexts and listening birds are capable of picking up on this,” Dr said.

The experiments with babblers showed that the birds re-use two sounds, “A” and “B”, in different arrangements. When emitting a flight call they use “AB”, and when they are feeding chicks they use “BAB”. Recordings where the two sounds are artificially spliced together show that the behaviour of the listening birds can be affected by whether they hear “AB” or “BAB”, no matter which original call was used as a source for the spliced sounds.

Sabrina Engesser of Zurich University, the lead author, said: “In contrast to most songbirds, chestnut-crowned babblers do not sing. Instead its extensive vocal repertoire is characterised by discrete calls made up of smaller acoustically distinct individual sounds.”

Professor Andy Russell of the University of Exeter said: “Babbler birds may choose to rearrange sounds to code new meaning because doing so through combining two existing sounds is quicker than evolving a new sound.”

The Independent

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