A Bird’s-Eye View of Communication

Animals often experience the world in ways that are beyond human capacities; if we don’t take their perceptual systems into account, we may overlook sources of social information for that species. What would happen if we applied this idea of “bird time” to song learning in the zebra finch, the most common model species for human speech development? We found that males used the gestures of females in response to their immature singing (similar to a human baby’s babbling) to guide their song towards more attractive forms.

Source: blogs.scientificamerican.com