Male zebra finches learn their song by imitating conspecifics. To stand out in the crowd, each male develops its own unique song. Because of this individual-specific song, it was long assumed that ...

Most professional singers agree that practice makes perfect. And now research published in Nature Communications shows that songbirds also rely on a daily vocal workout—if they want to impress ...

Animals learn by imitating behaviors, such as when a baby mimics her mother’s speaking voice or a young male zebra finch copies the mating song of an older male tutor, often his father. In a study ...

It goes a little something like this: A young male zebra finch, whose father taught him a song, shared that song with a brother, with the two youngsters then creating new tunes based on dad’s ...

Female zebra finches that did not learn courtship songs from their fathers in their youth can learn the courtship melody as adults through the experience of living with a male, a new study has found.

The babbling of zebra finches creates connections in the brain that enable them to memorize the song of their tutor. The picture shows a zebra finch chick (2nd from left) between a female (left) and a ...

When a thirsty and lonely male zebra finch changes his mind from getting a drink of water to prioritizing courtship, his dopamine-releasing brain cells reflect his new intensions A pair of Zebra ...

They say that hindsight is 20/20, and though the theory of ecological speciation—which holds that new species emerge in response to ecological changes—seems to hold in retrospect, it has been ...

Researchers have developed a new algorithm capable of identifying features of male zebra finch songs that may underlie the distinction between a short phrase sung during courtship, and the same phrase ...

A new study on songbirds sheds light on the power of social interaction to facilitate learning, insights that potentially apply to human development. The findings, published in Proceedings of the ...

There is increasing evidence that exposure to stress during development can have sustained effects on animal phenotype and performance across lifehistory stages. For example, developmental stress has ...