Scientists say they know why the caged bird sings. 1106 with 307 in optional trim

They also possess a highly evolved network of interconnected brain regions that control their ability to sing, hear and perceive the meaning of a multitude of sounds they hear in the wild every day.

Like dogs, not all songbirds are equal in their ability to learn. Black-capped chickadees, such as those found in Alberta's river valleys, seem to have an especially sophisticated system of communicating.

No one knows exactly why, but it may have something to do with their social structure. Chickadees flock up in fall and winter before paring up in spring. They are one of the few songbirds you hear communicating in the dead of winter.

The notion that songbirds can learn actually goes back to the days of Mozart, when cross-fostering experiments resulted in a linnet (a small finch-like bird) learning to sing like a skylark.

But the idea that they could tell us something about humans didn't really get started until the 1980s, when a small group of scientists, including Canadian Ron Weisman, Sturdy's mentor, began investigating the possibilities in systematic and sophisticated ways.

Now it's a fast-growing field, with major universities from around the world playing host to songbird labs such as Sturdy's.

As sophisticated as these ways are, the basic protocol for training a songbird in a lab is as simple as it gets in science.

Songbirds are rewarded with food for doing things right and punished for getting them wrong, much as dog-owners do when they're training puppies. In the case of songbirds, Sturdy and his students simply turn off the lights when the birds get the wrong answer.

To make sure that humans participating in some studies are trying their best, they are given a financial reward.

There are many reasons why songbirds communicate.

``Ron Weisman, my old boss, used to joke that it was all about sex and violence,'' says Sturdy. ``Funny as it sounds, there's a great deal of truth to it. Birds sing to woo a mate, stake out a territory and defend it against other birds and predators.''

As complex as some of these bird calls can be, they involve just four note types, which scientists in this field of study label as A, B, C, and D.

As with scat and jazz singers, who use predetermined formulas in innovative ways, chickadees will repeat the A or the B or the C or D notes and drop one of them in the sequencing. But unlike the improvised melodic line of a scat singer, they never mix up the sequence. D never follows A, for example and D will never follow C.

Sturdy acknowledges that he's been compared to Dr. Doolittle more than once in his career.

``I have been known to go out in my backyard to try and communicate with the birds to get the right response, just as most Canadians do when they go on a camping trip to see if they can get a response from a common loon. I'm not always successful, but it is gratifying when you get the response you are looking for.''

Sturdy is convinced the songbird's ability to learn is much greater than the abilities he has been able measure so far in his lab.

``Part of the problem is that we are dealing with birds in a lab that are not mating or looking out for predators. But I think the biggest thing is that we are probably not always asking the right questions when we design these experiments. It's not the songbird that the problem, it's us.''

Edmonton Journal

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