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 ...

William Feeney receives funding from Australian Geographic and the Australian National University. Species must reproduce to survive, and animals have found unique ways of achieving this. For some, ...

In studying animal communication, it’s hard to know whether animals react instinctively to the vocalizations of others or ...

Zebra finches don’t just mimic sounds—they understand them, revealing surprising insights into animal communication and cognition.

Individual zebra finches vary their immune response to balance the costs, depending on sex, age and the environment. When changing from nest-bound juveniles to adults, female immune responses matured ...

Researchers at UT Southwestern used zebra finches to study how the birds — and young humans — imitate vocalizations to learn languages.";s: Birds and babies may seem like very different creatures, but ...

The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content. Male zebra finches growing up without mothers prefer to bond with each other in adulthood, a new ...

Asst. Prof. Sarah London has long appreciated zebra finches for their unique learning characteristics. The males learn from another male tutor, but their ability to memorize the tutor’s song is ...

When it’s especially hot out, zebra finches sing a unique “incubation call” to their unhatched young—a song that seems to alter the chicks’ physical development after birth. Receive emails about ...

Zebra finches program their offspring to prepare for global warming by singing to eggs before they hatch. In especially hot areas, finch parents make a special call to incubating eggs, basically ...

Variation in pitch, amplitude and rhythm adds crucial paralinguistic information to human speech. Such prosodic cues can reveal information about the meaning or emphasis of a sentence or the emotional ...