A baby's babbling may sound like nonsense, but it's actually an extended act of trial-and-error learning. As babies produce ...

Like humans who can instantly tell which friend or relative is calling by the timbre of the person's voice, zebra finches have a near-human capacity for language mapping. If songbirds could appear on ...

If songbirds could appear on "The Masked Singer" reality TV competition, zebra finches would likely steal the show. That's because they can rapidly memorize the signature sounds of at least 50 ...

To us, bird song may just sound pretty. However, if we want to understand why birds sing, we have to consider that song may have multiple functions. A male’s song may serve to repel a male neighbor, ...

It may well be that only male zebra finches can sing, but the females are faster at learning to discriminate sounds, researchers have found. The aim of the research was to find out why some birds ...

How to birds learn to sing? How do we learn to talk? And what happens when it goes wrong? Read more ...

Every time a zebra finch lands, takes off, or hops on the guitars' strings, the notes play through a nearby amplifier. Courtesy of Ben Mirin The young male zebra finch alighted on the nearest guitar ...

This story is part of our summer Book Club conversation about Jennifer Ackerman’s book ‘The Genius of Birds.’ Want to participate? Sign up for our newsletter or send us your thoughts on the SciFri ...

(This video is no longer available for streaming.) Birds have an undeserved reputation for low brainpower. In fact, they produce one of the most glorious phenomena in nature: birdsong. How do their ...