A baby's babbling may sound like nonsense, but it's actually an extended act of trial-and-error learning. As babies produce different sounds, their brains note which attempts succeed and which ones ...

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 ...

When we hear a song for the first time, it often seems like it goes in one ear and out the other, sometimes only few catchy words from a chorus leaving much of an impression. But when the Australian ...

Their first vocalizations help young zebra finch males to memorize the songs of adults. When babies learn to talk or birds learn to sing, the same principle applies: listen and then imitate. This is ...

It goes a little something like this: A young male zebra finch, whose father taught him a song, shared that song with a brother, with the two youngsters then creating new tunes based on dad’s ...

The songs of zebra finches, long used as a model for how humans learn to use speech, get a little sloppy after a few drinks, a new study finds.... Scientists Discover That Drunk Birds Sing Like Drunks ...

Zebra finches who did not sing every day quickly lose their vocal prowess, a new study finds. The results could potentially shed light on vocal... These songbirds sing for hours a day to keep their ...

Australian zebra finches sing a rhythmic high-pitched song while incubating their eggs in a hot environment, which researchers have named a “heat call”. Experiments now show that this call influences ...

The first songbird to have its genome deciphered may offer new insight into how human children learn to speak. A GLOBAL TEAM OF scientists has sequenced the genome of Australia’s native zebra finch, ...

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 ...