Can birds have… accents?!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Zebra finches are tiny songbirds. Each sings a unique tune. Scientists long thought those differences were just individual flair… until now.
Enter Daiping Wang and team from Max Planck Institute in Germany. They let machine learning do the listening to songs from four different populations of zebra finches.
And? Each group had its OWN song style. Zebra finches have DIALECTS!
But here’s the twist! Researchers swapped eggs between groups, so chicks grew up hearing different “accents.” When mating season arrived, the birds picked partners with their LOCAL ACCENT. Not the ones with shared genes!
Turns out, in birds, accents woo the heart!
Reference: Wang, D., Forstmeier, W., Farine, D.R. et al. Machine learning reveals cryptic dialects that explain mate choice in a songbird. Nat Commun 13, 1630 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28881-w