After hundreds of millions of years of evolution, songbirds and humans continue to share things in common: Both learn to sing ...

We are all born completely helpless, with little of the knowledge and skills we will need to survive as adults. Even our ...

Male zebra finches learn their song by imitating conspecifics. To stand out in the crowd, each male develops its own unique song. Because of this individual-specific song, it was long assumed that ...

Bird’s nests come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and they’re built out of all sorts of things. Hummingbirds, for instance, create tiny cups just a couple centimeters wide; sociable weavers in ...

We are all born completely helpless, with little of the knowledge and skills we will need to survive as adults. Even our ...

Every time a zebra finch lands, takes off, or hops on the guitars' strings, the notes play through a nearby amplifier. Courtesy of Ben Mirin The young male zebra finch alighted on the nearest guitar ...

We all know the adage, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks." As we age, our ability to learn new skills, like mastering a foreign language or picking up a musical instrument, seems to fade. The ...

The babbling of zebra finches creates connections in the brain that enable them to memorize the song of their tutor. The picture shows a zebra finch chick (2nd from left) between a female (left) and a ...

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 reveals ...

Species must reproduce to survive, and animals have found unique ways of achieving this. For some, including us, it seems as though producing a few offspring that require extended care is the best ...

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. If songbirds could appear on ...