Research Proves Birds Have The Ability To Understand Language Of Different Species

A research recently found that animals can learn to listen and respond to languages of different species. Researchers who discovered certain birds can recognise unfamiliar language of other animals focused on noises made as a signal of threat.

Biologists from the Australian National Universit, or ANU, found that wild superb fairy-wrens or Malurus cyaneus can learn to respond from unfamiliar sounds made by different animals to respond to danger alarm calls. The researchers conducted the to understand information flow among different species in the wild.

The research team, led by Robert Magrath, designed an to analyse how certain captive animals can learn to communicate and recognise foreign language or signal from species to respond to danger. Through eavesdropping, or what is commonly done by people to secretly listen to a conversation, researchers trained 10 individual wrens by broadcasting unfamiliar sounds in several days.

In the wild, wrens will flee to safety when they hear unfamiliar sounds that sound like their own alarm calls, but not to alarm calls that sound different from their own. The researchers used to play a fake sound of thornbill alarm call that the fairy-wrens were unfamiliar by that time and then throwing a model glider of a predatory bird, a currawong or a collared sparrowhawk, towards the wrens to see their response.

On the first day, the wrens ignored and didn’t respond to the noise. Then the birds went through two days of training in which the alarm call was played as a mock predator glided overhead. The team had created their own alarm call with notes increased in tempo and amplitude, because in some species, both familiar or unfamiliar with the noise, such “looming” sounds can prompt an animal to be threatened and flee. But fairy-wrens that heard that sound without having seen a predator didn’t react, supporting the conclusion that the birds were learning to respond to the sound that had not been paired with the gliders.

On day three of training using fake predatory birds, the researchers played the recorded calls again, but without the false-predator above any of the birds and eight of the 10 birds that had been exposed to the predator in the previous days fled in response to those foreign sounds. The researchers discovered that fairy-wrens learned to associate the previously foreign or unfamiliar alarm calls with danger, the researchers report in Current Biology.

The research team leader, Magrath, stated that the result of tests conducted near his office at the university surprised them and left them in disbelief when the first bird learned the task. “The first bird we tested lived on the ANU campus near my office. There was general disbelief and excitement when the bird learned the task perfectly,” he said.

Magrath stated that the team had been doing on animal learning through different methods to understand how animals get information about dangers by eavesdropping on each other. But after the success of the three-day experiment, the biology professor said, “it was exciting to finally crack the practical problems of carrying out this experiment, and get clear results.”

In the research, Magrath stated that the fairy-wrens developed a remarkable ability to recognise other specie’s calls amid the number of different species in the natural community. “Recognizing other species’ calls is a remarkable ability, because there are lots of species in a natural community, and lots of different types of calls. It’s like understanding multiple foreign languages,” he said.

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