An excellent fe-wrome (left) trying to avert a cuckoo
David NILY
More than 20 bird species around the world use a similar “whining” alarm call to warn birds like cuckoo are around. The call seems to be understood across species, and its specific use suggests how languages ​​may have original.
Cuckoos is one of an area of ​​about 100 species known as Stamparasites that their eggs in the nest of other birds trying to bypass the hosts to incubation and care for the ruger, as if they were the hosts’ own offspring.
Will Feeney at Doñana Biological Station in Spain and Hans Colleugues have now found 21 bird species, which last shared a common tribal father about 53 million years ago, all use structurally similar “whining” vocalizations when they spot a brood parasite.
The species includes excellent Fe-Wrens (Malurus Cyaneus) In Australasia, Tawny-flanked Prinia (Prinia subflava) In Africa, Humes leaf warriors (Phylloscopus Humei) in Asia and Greenish Warmakers (Phylloscopus trochiloides) in Europe.
“All of these different birds from all over the world seem to have converged by using this same vocalization to denote their respective stamparasites,” Feeney says.
The researchers found the species that produce this alarm call often inhabit areas where there are plenty of stamparasites that use many different host species, and when the potential hosts hear the whining call, they are scare the invading with aggressive bullying.
“BROD -parasites take over this very unique form of threat. They are ancestry threat against your offspring, but not a threat to you at all,” Feeney says. “Our data suggests that [the call] is to pick up birds as soon as possible, potentially to help. “
“For the excellent FE-WRENS, because they are collaborative breeders, it is very possible that the mob calling call is intended to draw other people to participate in the mob,” says Rose Thorogood at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
To investigate further, FEENEY and his colleagues played recordings of the calls made by brood parasite hosts from other continents to potential hosts in Australia and China. They discovered having heard the foreign warning calls that were elicited as quickly a bully response as hearing the calls produced by their own kind.
“This indicates that the function of this vocalization is to facilitate communication across species rather than just within,” Feeney says.
Thorogood krations, “It may not be that they have an ancestral, old common alarm against stamparasites, but rather it may just be that it is a particular acoustic feature that seems to be a success in driving away from brood parasites.
The team also did a similar playback experiment in territories of yellow warmyers (Setophaga petechia) In North America used as eggin -incubators of brown -headed cowbirds (Molothrus Ather), goals do not make the distinctive whining alarm call. When they heard alarm calls from excellent Fe-Wrens, the war tabs reacted with a quick return to their nest, very asyy does with other calls indicating distress, rather than mobbing.
FEENEY says this suggests that there is a congenital component of alarm calls that Mayry Bird species respond to, but birds in areas where brood parasites are common, have tailored the call and responsibility for passing on knowledge of the local risk.
“They have taken an emergency call vocalization and reused it for use in a new context, which is a major threat to offspring,” he says. “It would explain why all these birds from all over the world use a similar sound.”
Charles Darwin speculated in his book from 1871 Man’s descent The origin of the spoken language can be traceable to imitation and change of instinctive sounds that humans and other animals produce. Examples of these can be a creak if you are scared or a scream made on responsibility for bread. “The birds that adapt these congenital calls to another purpose may be the first springboard against language,” Feeney says.
Rob Magrath at the Australian National University says: “Calls often have specific meanings, and in sometimes, they are true to external objects or events, rather than communicating about internal states such as fear or attributes such as sex or species.”
“This reference means that such calls are similar to human words that often go to external objects or events,” he adds. “So animal communication and human language seem to be on have continuum, rather than” language “is a unique human trait.”
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