Young Birds Are Forgetting Their Songs As Adults Are Dying Faster, Says Study
The authors came to the conclusion after spending a decade logging the singing skills of a songbird known as a regent honeyeater. These birds are already under the critically endangered category.
Bird songs are one of the many ways nature makes us experience its beauty. However, it looks like with the new generation, some birds are actually forgetting their song.
Murray Chambers
This is according to a study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B that has revealed that some male songbirds who belong to endangered species are losing their ability to sing as well as their ancestors.
Lost songs of the birds
The study suggests that in areas where the population of these birds are dwindling, male songbirds are having difficulty in picking up on the songs that their kin sung to attract mates -- just like humans who lose culture with future generations, these birds are losing theirs, over time.
The authors came to the conclusion after spending a decade logging the singing skills of a songbird known as a regent honeyeater. These birds are already under the critically endangered category.
This doesn¡¯t mean that the birds are losing their ability to sing -- that¡¯s something the birds inherit when they¡¯re born. It¡¯s more of what to sing that they often learn with experience with their parents or other birds. In a way, these songs are passed down from generations.
With really low populations, the newborn birds don¡¯t really grow up listening to the same songs, so they don¡¯t really know what to sing -- at times even not enough to attract mates.
Endangered species, no learning time
According to the researchers, 12 percent of the birds they observed failed to sing the songs of their own species, and 27 percent of them sang songs that were drastically different from the songs which still ended up being successful in attracting females for mating.
Ross Crates, lead author of the study, explains in a statement, ¡°If endangered birds are unable to learn how to sing correctly, it seriously impacts their ability to communicate. It could also be exacerbating the honeyeater¡¯s population decline because we know a sexy song increases the odds of reproduction in songbirds. Females will avoid males that sing unusual songs.¡±
Jan Wegener/Minden Pictures
According to the author, this only exacerbates the problem as without learning the skill to attract the mate, their population will lower even further to a point when they cease to exist entirely.
According to the researchers, 12 percent of the birds they observed failed to sing the songs of their own species, and 27 percent of them sang songs that were drastically different from the songs which still ended up being successful in attracting females for mating.
