11–12 of 12 posts
"Up to 80% of the Superb Lyrebird’s song consists of mimicry, and it’s not unusual for an individual male lyrebird to have mastered the calls of 20-25 species of bird." https://wildambience.com/wildlife-sounds/superb-lyrebird/
The R2D2 bird
I am not sure what to think, it could be that birds that are better problem-solvers are better at vocal mimicry. The study is for some reason focusing on vocal skills and problem-solving, both of which are part of executive functions. I am unsure that something which has complex language skills would necessarily be good at problem-solving, or vice versa. Mice are great at problem-solving, but they don't have much in…
Mice do have pretty complex multisyllabic vocalizations, it's just that the majority fall outside of our auditory range. It's the same for rabbits. They've even found that mice sing in different contexts (some courtship related, some not) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2015.0007... In humans at least we know that if an individual doesn't pick up a language as a child they will not be fully able to…