Babies don’t babble to sound cute—they’re taking their first steps on the path to learning language. Now, a study shows parrot chicks do the same.
Although the behavior has been seen in songbirds and two mammalian species, finding it in these birds is important, experts say, as they may provide the bestThe find is “exciting,” says Irene Pepperberg, a comparative psychologist at Hunter College not involved with the work. Pepperberg herselfin a famed African gray parrot named Alex, which she studied for more than 30 years.
In this study, the scientists focused on green-rumped parrotlets , parrotlets are vocal learners. They master their calls by listening and mimicking what they hear. The chicks in the new studyThey increased the complexity of their sounds dramatically over the next week, the scientists report today in theThe baby birds uttered strings of soft peeps, clicks, and grrs, but they weren’t communicating with their siblings or parents, says lead author Rory Eggleston, a Ph.D.
Spectrographs of the chicks’ babbling bouts revealed 27 distinct calls. In that “tossed salad” of sounds, the scientists picked out begging, alarm, contact calls, warbling, and other calls the chicks heard from their parents and other parrotlets outside, says co-author Karl Berg, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. “It was quite a surprise: The nestlings know the full repertory of adult vocalizations,” he adds.
Scientists have studied babbling in songbirds like zebra finches and white-crowned sparrows, as well as in
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