Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls (2016)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4786783/

by studius • 6 years ago

143 40 6 years ago

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

TLDR: they have studied two types of calls in a specific bird - one type is dubbed ABC and elicits a horizontal scanning behavior; the other, dubbed D, elicits approaching the loudspeaker. Then, they have shown that the sequence ABC - D elicits both behaviors at the same time (the birds scan the area and they come close to the speaker). However, the sequence D - ABC does not elicit this combined behavior - it only elicits one behavior or the other, but not both in the same individual.

The conclusion is that the birds interpret the sequence ABC - D as a meaningful unit, different from its constituent parts, which is a kind of interpretation only previously confirmed in humans.

Swizec3• 6 years ago

We have a parrot and he definitely understands the difference between “put kiwi to bed” and using “bed” in any other context.

Of course it could also be because he correlates environment cues to bed time.

Either way, birds are smarter than you think until you spend time observing them.

yowlingcat3• 6 years ago

I've been wanting to get a parrot for a while. How often do parrots end up speaking like colorful, foul-mouthed sailors [1]? Seems charming, honestly.

[1] https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/09/zoo-separates-foul-mouthe...

davisr• 6 years ago

  > birds are smarter than you think until you spend time observing them

People, too.

danenania• 6 years ago

I wonder how generalizable research on parrot language would be to other bird species? They seem to be pretty unique in their capabilities, but perhaps that's just from a human perspective.

hirundo• 6 years ago

Humans have tonal components to meaning, e.g. in English, "You are hungry." doesn't have the lift at the end as does "You are hungry?". I wonder if any birds do something similar to distinguish, e.g. "Predator!" vs "Predator?". Maybe someday an app on our phones will be able to translate as we walk through the woods, like "A female Carolina chickadee in the sycamore at 10 o'clock says there's a raven coming from the south".

neffy• 6 years ago

There are features in the frequency ranges of bird calls that suggest this. Alarm calls are usually on frequencies that have better propagation (this also depends on the habitat that birds occupy - ground living birds have much lower frequency calls because the sound spreads better close to the ground. Calls that go to chicks tend to be on higher, less propagating frequencies. On the other side, the calls that hunting birds make tend to look like an all frequency sweep - possibly they are trying to get a response from other species to locate them.

737maxtw• 6 years ago

"Predator!" vs "Predator?"

Should have gone with "Friendship!" VS "Friendship?"

rthomas6• 6 years ago

There really are birds that have predator warning calls. Other animals even listen for them and hide when they hear them.

ineedasername2• 6 years ago

This is the case even though English isn't even considered a tonal language. Mandarin is a highly tonal language with four distinct formalized tones. Not only that, but the brain has to adapt to pick out those tones clearly. As a result, "perfect pitch" is much more common for Mandarin speakers than speakers of non-tonal languages.

gibolt• 6 years ago

Tonal here is very different. The tone in Chinese is a completely different word. Multiple words have the same tone and thus pronunciation with different meaning (and character). Tone usage on one word would not change the interpretation.

There are cases where this is kind of like English, in the case of buy/sell 买/卖, but still quite different

jungletime2• 6 years ago

I did a hike on a mountain ridge in Hawaii (Stairway to Heaven), and was very shocked by how loud the highway below was. I was maybe 3000 feet above. The sound was amplified from from the valley below, the mountain sides almost acting like walls of a speaker.

It's something that I don't think gets enough attention, the way light pollution does. But its' definitely a problem in some places. And I can see how it would disrupt bird calls.

inglor_cz• 6 years ago

So true. I am rather shortsighted, but my body compensated by developing quite good hearing sense. The noise pollution all around is serious.

Tade0• 6 years ago

It's something that I don't think gets enough attention, the way light pollution does.

It does in German speaking parts of Europe - highways on weekends and during the night have speed limits set to reduce noise.

LargoLasskhyfv• 6 years ago

I think that is because of the people living near them. Were the birds even considered?

spaetzleesser• 6 years ago

That was pretty noticeable during the lockdowns earlier this year. It was really quiet.

yowlingcat3• 6 years ago

Obligatory reference to Raymond Smullyan's seminal To Mock A Mockingbird [1], one of my favorite books and a great introduction to the lambda calculus. I guess the resemblance to actual bird language is more than just passing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird

lkuty• 6 years ago

Yes, I just thought about that one. That's funny.

mikro2nd• 6 years ago

Am I the only one wondering what the National Institutes of Health has to do with ornithological research? Isn't this a little outside their mandated field?

anamexis• 6 years ago

The NIH did not run this study. The submitted link is just the article (from the Nature Community journal) being hosted by the NIH's library.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/

hprotagonist• 6 years ago

This work was done with a combination of funding from the US national science foundation and Japan's JSPS (see acknowledgements) and doesn't involve the NIH directly. PubMed/PMC are hosted there, though.

That said, animal models are extremely common for NIH-funded work, and birds feature prominently in studies of language and auditory processing.

cma• 6 years ago

I don't know the details of this study, but aside from that this might prove relevant to humans, NIH also do veterinary research: https://www.ors.od.nih.gov/sr/dvr/Pages/default.aspx

bmn__• 6 years ago

BNF grammar and sample inputs/outputs: https://paste.debian.net/plain/1167596

If your parser can't handle that, then it's literally dumber than a tit.

jwmhjwmh• 6 years ago

I may be misunderstanding, but didn't the paper say the Warning has to come before the Approach to elicit much of a response?

exdsq2• 6 years ago

Yes, ABC-D elicits a response while D-ABC doesn’t

jungletime2• 6 years ago

Just curious, are there any projects for creating a software talking parrot? Maybe one that would integrate with Alexa of Google voice assistant.

Video is 5 years old. Seem pretty cool. Steampunk parrot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mxSl06IZaY

Edit: I guess this is the guys original channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esSbc4phCjk&t=34s

tombert2• 6 years ago

Every time I read one of these articles, I start feeling increasingly worse about not being a vegan.

I still eat meat, but I do wonder what paper is going to get released that is the tipping point for me; it's easy for me to justify eating meat if I think these animals are so stupid that they can't feel higher-level emotions, but if we have legitimate evidence of animals having "uniquely human" traits, I can't help but think that us eating them is sort of ungodly cruel.

Twisol2• 6 years ago

I empathize, but I'm also curious -- does it change anything for you that many bird species are themselves carnivorous?

tombert2• 6 years ago

It is a factor I think about; I'm not saying that it's never ethical to eat meat; I don't condemn a lion for eating an antelope, since I'm not even sure it's possible for a lion to be a vegan if it really wanted to [0]. Similarly, I don't have a problem with birds being carnivorous.

That said, anyone reading this post is probably not a lion or a bird, and has some level of self-reflection as a result. Just to play devil's advocate for a bit, couldn't you argue that if it's possible for me to live a fairly healthy life without killing any higher-minded creatures, then I should? If we are smart enough to have an entire philosophy of ethics, then shouldn't we be using this ethical framework to minimize suffering in the world?

I should reemphasize, I'm not a vegan, or a vegetarian, I have a fairly typical American diet of "it's not a meal without meat" sadly. I'm just saying that these kinds of papers make me question that.

[0] I'm not a biologist or doctor or anything, but my understanding is that cats (at least house cats) cannot product their own vitamin A out of Beta-Carotene like humans can, and must get it out of animals. I certainly cannot blame any animal that is doing what it absolutely has to for survival.

debbiedowner• 6 years ago

Even the cortical neurons of ferrets have special representation for phonemes from human language: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18247893/

Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls (2016)

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