For example, work linking species variation in the strength of Menzerath's Law to species variation in the biomechanics of vocal production would be a useful next step. 26, 2023, 4:35 PM ET (AP) 'Hunger Games' feasts, 'Napoleon' conquers but 'Wish' doesn't come true at Thanksgiving box office songbird, any member of the suborder Passeri (or Oscines), of the order Passeriformes, including about 4,000 speciesnearly half the world’s birdsin 35 to 55 families. These results suggest that physical predispositions or limitations may play a role in producing these song patterns."įurther work will need to be done in this area to see whether this is indeed the case. "However, the 'rules' by which they organize these aberrant elements is indistinguishable from typically raised birds. "The individual units of sound made by untutored birds were very different from those made by the typically raised birds," said Logan James, the first author on the paper and a former PhD student in Professor Sakata's lab, now a post-doctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin. The idea that physical elements may play a role in these song patterns is supported by the fact that when the researchers compared the song patterns of birds that had been typically reared and tutored by their parents with those that had not been taught to sing by their parents (untutored birds), they found the same patterns. Interestingly, Sakata also notes that the brain mechanisms regulating breathing and vocal muscles seem to be organized in similar ways in birds and humans.Įven song from untutored birds follow similar patterns "It is possible that these patterns of communication that we saw in songbirds are caused by physical predispositions and constraints." "Although we see Menzerath's Law in all the songbird species we looked at, and others have seen it among primates and penguins, we aren't sure this necessarily reflects enhanced communication efficiency in non-human animals," said Jon Sakata, a professor in McGill's Biology Department and the senior author on the paper that was recently published in Current Biology. They also speculate that similar factors could contribute to seeing Menzerath's Law in humans.ĭo physical elements play a role in songbird (and human) vocal patterns? Linguists speculate that this pattern, known as Menzerath's Law, may make communication more efficient by making things easier to understand or say.īut the McGill team suggest that, at least in songbirds, physical factors such as muscle fatigue and limited lung capacities may also play a role. The songbirds the researchers studied, like humans - no matter what language they speak - tend to use shorter elements (whether these are words or sounds) when they are putting together longer phrases.
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