The better a songbird is at working its way around obstacles to retrieve a snack, the more complex its vocal learning ability will be. The European starling boasts a remarkable repertoire. Versatile ...

Vocal learning complexity, or the ability to imitate sounds, is associated with better problem-solving abilities and larger brains in songbird species, according to a new study. Whether vocal learning ...

For decades, scientists have known that only a few groups of birds—songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds—can learn to produce new sounds. But a new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume ...

The European starling boasts a remarkable repertoire. Versatile songbirds that learn warbles, whistles, calls, and songs throughout their lives, starlings rank among the most advanced avian vocal ...

A symphony of synapses fires every time a songbird sings. For Erich Jarvis, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, the neural pathways he finds particularly interesting inside a bird’s brain are ...

Birdsong, like human speech, consists of a sequence of temporally precise movements acquired through vocal learning. The learning of such sequential vocalizations depends on the neural function of the ...

A very interesting study was just published that finds many parrots use words in appropriate contexts. This study, based on an analysis of almost 900 companion parrots as reported by a flock of ...

Besides being an adorable and important part of marine ecosystems, baby seals might have a unusual ability. They can change the pitch of their voices to be better understood, like humans do, a new ...