Crows can count out loudResearch has shown that there are cases of birds being highly intelligent as well. For a long time, it was thought that it was impossible for birds to talk, but research into bird vocalizations has revealed that they communicate vocally through their calls.
How Scientists Started to Decode Birdsong | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/10/21/how-scientists-started-to-decode-birdsong
located in austriaKonrad Lorenz Center for Behavioral and Cognitive ResearchSonia Kleindorfer, director of the biologist and avian ecologist, was an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania.songbirdsMales sing, females do not. I had the idea that if a female squawked, something was wrong. However, after taking a research position at Flinders University in Australia, I confirmed that female songbirds also sing, and ever since then I have been conducting research on bird vocalizations.
For example, Kleindorfer set up a camera and microphone in a wren’s nest and observed it. They discovered that the female wren was singing a lullaby while incubating her eggs in the nest. A baby bird, which is still in its embryonic state inside an egg, has undeveloped ears and should not be able to hear sounds, so Kleindorfer asked, “Why do they behave in a way that attracts predators?” He had doubts about this, but when he compared the cries of the female while incubating the eggs and the begging cries that the chicks make after hatching, they found that they matched.
The begging voices of baby birds differed depending on the nest in which they grew up, indicating that the birds learn their mother’s voice while in the egg. Experiments in which eggs were transferred to other nests also confirmed that the hatched chicks imitated the voices of their nest parents, rather than their genetic parents.
Embryonic Learning of Vocal Passwords in Superb Fairy-Wrens Reveals Intruder Cuckoo Nestlings: Current Biology
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(12)01125-6
According to Kleindorfer, this was a paradigm shift since songbirds were thought to learn their calls from their fathers. Later, the same process was confirmed in many songbirds.
In the 1970s, Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth confirmed in field experiments on savannah monkeys living in Kenya that animals use different sounds to communicate. Experiments have shown that savannah monkeys use different calls to alert different predators: eagles, snakes, and leopards. Although young individuals sometimes make mistakes in the corresponding calls, as they grow they learn and begin to use the correct calls.
The results of this research have been published as a paper and as a book, “How Monkeys See the World.”
It has been confirmed that Siberian jays also make calls in three different ways: when the hawk is perched on a branch, when the hawk is flying, and when the hawk is attacking prey.
Additionally, the University of Tokyo has the world’s first research facility that explores the meaning of these animal sounds and gestures, how they help them survive and reproduce, and what kind of cognitive abilities they evolved with. There is a laboratory specializing in the field of “animal linguistics”.
Suzuki Lab
https://www.animallinguistics.org/
Department of Animal Linguistics Suzuki Laboratory | University of Tokyo Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology
https://www.rcast.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ja/research/suzuki_lab.html
Associate Professor Toshiki Suzuki of the laboratory conducted research on the calls of great tits during his university days, and discovered that they can be formed into words or sentences, and that they can also make gestures using their wings.
Toshiki Suzuki “Vocal communication and cognitive development in birds” | Toho University, Faculty of Science, Department of Biology, Geoecology Laboratory
https://www.lab.toho-u.ac.jp/sci/bio/geoeco/research/2007/suzuki.html
Additionally, a project is underway to use AI to decipher non-human communication.
Earth Species Project
https://www.earthspecies.org/
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