I could have told them this.....My zebra finches talk to me all the time!
I have 5 great friends. My zebra finches. My girls China, Emily, and Lucy, and my boys Hopper and Yakee.
They always talk to mommy and daddy.
WASHINGTON - The happy babbling that entertains parents as their babies try to mimic speech turns out to have a parallel in the animal world. Baby birds babble away before mastering their adult song, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
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Michale S. Fee and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the brains of baby zebra finches as the little birds learned the unique song they would use as adults.
The baby birds practiced making sounds incessantly, the team reports in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
"Birds start out by babbling, just as humans do," Fee said, while the adult bird produces a very precise pattern of sound.
Like babies moving their limbs or trying to walk, babbling emphasizes the importance of play activities in learning.
"The parallels between human and bird language are indeed striking," said psychology professor Bob McMurray of the University of Iowa, though there are also important differences between the structure of human language and bird song.
"This work illustrates that language learning may operate by very general principles ... that can be seen across species as different as finches and humans," added McMurray, who was not part of Fee's team.
They always talk to mommy and daddy.
WASHINGTON - The happy babbling that entertains parents as their babies try to mimic speech turns out to have a parallel in the animal world. Baby birds babble away before mastering their adult song, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
ADVERTISEMENT
Michale S. Fee and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the brains of baby zebra finches as the little birds learned the unique song they would use as adults.
The baby birds practiced making sounds incessantly, the team reports in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
"Birds start out by babbling, just as humans do," Fee said, while the adult bird produces a very precise pattern of sound.
Like babies moving their limbs or trying to walk, babbling emphasizes the importance of play activities in learning.
"The parallels between human and bird language are indeed striking," said psychology professor Bob McMurray of the University of Iowa, though there are also important differences between the structure of human language and bird song.
"This work illustrates that language learning may operate by very general principles ... that can be seen across species as different as finches and humans," added McMurray, who was not part of Fee's team.