If Cupid wanted to make two songbirds fall in love, he’d have better luck aiming at their brains. That’s because songbirds, which form lifelong mating pairs, have brain systems perfectly tuned to fit together, researchers at Columbia University explained.
Young males in this family of feathered crooners learn the song of their father, perfect it and perform it as adults to attract a lifelong mate. It’s loud, elaborate and precise.
A female finch also learns her father’s song, but she doesn’t perform. She’s the critic. She analyses every detail of a potential mate’s song, and decides if she wants to keep him around.
Researchers looking into finch brains say that each sex uses what’s called its sound control system to convert sound waves into social messages and then use them to find mates. While these systems are well-developed and finely tuned in both sexes of songbirds, the wiring is different.
“The biggest difference between male and female brains of the same species is found in songbirds,” says Sarah Woolley, a neuroscientist who studies finches at Columbia University.
Researchers looking into finch brains say that each sex uses what’s called its sound control system to convert sound waves into social messages and then use them to find mates. While these systems are well-developed and finely tuned in both sexes of songbirds, the wiring is different.
“The biggest difference between male and female brains of the same species is found in songbirds,” says Sarah Woolley, a neuroscientist who studies finches at Columbia University.
Woolley’s lab has been looking into the acoustic systems of zebra, bengalese and long-tailed finches to see how their brains take in and process sounds – learning, performing and analysing different parts of them to make sense of songs.
Females tend to prefer elaborate songs with more syllables.
How well the birds learn depends on a genetic predisposition to tune into sounds specific to their species. But experience is important too. Because social relationships are so powerful, a baby bird reared by the wrong species, Woolley has found, can learn the wrong species’ song even if its biological father’s song is audible.
“The magic of the songbird is that vocal learning is incredibly rare to find in animals,” Woolley says.
She believes that by understanding more about how songbirds use their brains to make sense of sound, she can learn more about how humans use theirs to develop a spoken language early to communicate later in life.
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