The European starling boasts a remarkable repertoire. Versatile songbirds that learn warbles, whistles, calls, and songs throughout their lives, starlings rank among the most advanced avian vocal learners. Now a new study published in Science finds that starlings, along with other complex vocal learners, are also superior problem solvers.
finds that starlings, along with other complex vocal learners, are also superior problem solvers.
To determine whether vocal learning is linked to different cognitive abilities in songbirds, Audet and colleagues spent three years catching hundreds offrom 21 species in mist nets at The Rockefeller University Field Research Center, a sprawling 1,200 protected acres of land compromising many different ecosystems in New York's Hudson Valley.
"It's a protected area, which means the animals have limited exposure to humans," says Mélanie Couture, a research assistant who worked on the study."This is ideal for studying the behaviors of wild birds—what they can do, and how they react toUpon ranking the vocal learning capabilities of their subjects, three frontrunners emerged: starlings, blue jays, and gray catbirds . These were also the only three capable of mimicking other species .
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