Songbirds like parrots and parrots are probably well known for squeaking awkward one-liners And certain four letter wordsbut these are not the only sounds they can imitate. Birds have been observed to copy the dog barks, car alarmand even chainsaws. There's also no shortage of online videos showing particularly skillful birds imitating perhaps the world's most famous robot: R2-D2. But it turns out that some species are better adapted to copying Star wars droids shrill beeps and beeps than others. The results are described in detail in article recently published in Scientific reports
Researchers from the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University in the Netherlands analyzed a variety of volunteer-provided videos of various songbirds attempting to imitate R2-D2's signature sounds. They specifically compared the results among nine different species of parrots and European starlings.
While most people might immediately associate parrots with vocal expressions, the starlings in the study actually performed much better thanks to a uniquely shaped vocal organ that allows them to produce two tones at once. Interestingly, larger brains, whether in parrots or starlings, did not lead to improved facial expression either.
When it comes to copying R2-D2, the best option would be small birds with small brains.
CREDIT: Birdsingalong Project.
Teaching Birds to Call, Whistle, and Clank
Some eccentric bird owners tried teach your feathered friends to dramatize Star wars scenes for many years. YouTube and Instagram are full of videos of starlings and parrots trying to imitate the robot's sounds, albeit with varying degrees of success. There are even a few videos some have over a million viewsdesigned specifically to train birds to perfect impressions.
For their experiment, the researchers analyzed a total of 115 videos submitted to the citizen science website The. Project “Birdsong”. The study analyzed examples in which different bird species successfully imitated both monophonic (single-tone) and polyphonic (multi-tone) sounds.
CREDIT: Carly Jeffrey.
For context: R2-D2's “voice” Star wars Films was created by audio engineer Ben Burtt using a “ring modulator” on an ARP 2600 modular synthesizer. The modulator combines multiple audio input signals and combines them to create a multi-tone output signal. The result: chaotic swells of sounds that R2-D2 makes when he's scared or stressed. In other words, the R2-D2 can produce both monophonic and polyphonic sounds.
For birds, differences in their anatomy determine what types of robot sounds they can imitate. None of the parrot species analyzed were able to reproduce the polyphonic sounds of the droid. Like humans, parrots have a vocal organ whose shape allows them to produce only one tone at a time. In contrast, starlings have vocal organs with two sound sources, giving them the physical ability to imitate the more complex, multi-tonal sounds of R2-D2.
Although the parrots were unable to fully reproduce R2-D2's vocabulary, they were able to imitate some of the robot's simpler single-tone beeps and sounds. However, even in this case, some parrots fared better than others. Overall, the study found that smaller species of parrots, such as budgerigars and cockatiels, imitated simple droid sounds more accurately than larger species such as African grays and Amazon parrots.
“In our study, we found that parrots, with larger brains as well as relatively larger carapace cores, imitated monophonic sounds significantly less accurately than budgerigars and cockatiels, which have smaller carapace regions and larger core regions.” the researchers wrote. “However, parrots with smaller brains have a smaller repertoire of imitated sounds.”
Connected: [We finally know how parrots ‘talk’]
When it comes to speech, the phrase “birdbrain” is not an insult.
Recent research has shed new light on how songbirds are able to remember phrases and copy sounds with such a high degree of accuracy. One study published earlier this year in Nature, analyzed areas of the parrots' brains while they made sounds and found remarkable similarity to the neural areas that control speech in humans.
Other studies show that parrots and macaws even have the ability communicate with each other remotely via video calls. Some of these birds can accumulate a vocabulary that rivals that of many babies. Puck, a pet budgie who died in 1994. reportedly learned a shocking 1,728 words.
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