6 ms·

Experimental evidence for compositional syntax in bird calls (2016)

143 points by studius 6y ago

tsimionescu 6y ago
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.
- Swizec 6y 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.
  - yowlingcat 6y 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-mouthed-parrots-for-swearing-too-much.html https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/09/zoo-separates-foul-mouthe...
    - Swizec 6y ago
      Depends on the species. Mine doesn’t talk, he instead learned to whistle. His species (sun conure) doesn’t normally whistle, he picked it up from me. It’s more pleasant than the 80db screams so we encourage it. He used to say his name sort of (if you added some human pattern recognition magic) but stopped after we moved apartments. No idea why. The worst is when he mimics human speech patterns. You can tell it isn’t words but it’s close enough to distract you every time. Main thing with parrots is that they’re more work than people think. Like human children they get bored, have tantrums, internal emotional states, and respond to the same stimuli differently based on mood. And unlike children they cannot be reasoned with. Some are smart enough to lie and obscure because they have theory of mind. And they stay like that for 30 years. Some species even longer.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      I'd suggest you do some 'parrot sitting' first, look after someone's parrot for a while to see if it is something that you will really like. A lot of parrots get bought as impulse buys by people who have absolutely no idea what it is like to actually have a parrot and to have to take care of it.
      - yowlingcat 6y ago
        Yeah, that's always the right answer. I've gone through this mental exercise multiple times before -- I want to get a parrot! But they live a long time and are extremely intelligent. They're very independent and when they are unhappy can become destructive. Am I a good enough beast-keeper to pull that off? Not really. I agree with you that parrot sitting is a smart idea.
  - davisr 6y ago
    > birds are smarter than you think until you spend time observing them People, too.
  - danenania 6y 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.
    - Swizec 6y ago
      Some corvids can learn how to speak but I haven’t heard whether they understand the words. With parrots there’s evidence that some species learn meanings of the words they use.
hirundo 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
  > "Predator!" vs "Predator?" Should have gone with "Friendship!" VS "Friendship?"
  - rthomas6 6y ago
    There really are birds that have predator warning calls. Other animals even listen for them and hide when they hear them.
    - trgn 6y ago
      We can always tell when our neighbor's cat is outside when the birds in our yards start to get agitated.
      - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
        I've noticed the warning call differs at times, I hear two chirps for land based predator and three for air. Small sample size, city finches.
jungletime 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
    I think that is because of the people living near them. Were the birds even considered?
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  That was pretty noticeable during the lockdowns earlier this year. It was really quiet.
yowlingcat 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird
- lkuty 6y ago
  Yes, I just thought about that one. That's funny.
mikro2nd 6y 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 6y 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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hprotagonist 6y 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 6y 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 https://www.ors.od.nih.gov/sr/dvr/Pages/default.aspx
bmn__ 6y ago
BNF grammar and sample inputs/outputs: https://paste.debian.net/plain/1167596 https://paste.debian.net/plain/1167596 If your parser can't handle that, then it's literally dumber than a tit.
- jwmhjwmh 6y 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?
  - exdsq 6y ago
    Yes, ABC-D elicits a response while D-ABC doesn’t
jungletime 6y 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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esSbc4phCjk&t=34s
tombert 6y 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.
- Twisol 6y ago
  I empathize, but I'm also curious -- does it change anything for you that many bird species are themselves carnivorous?
  - tombert 6y 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.
    - exdsq 6y ago
      I believe humans still require vitamin B12 which we can only get from meat, however you can supplement this via plant-based milk and other ingredients.
debbiedowner 6y ago
Even the cortical neurons of ferrets have special representation for phonemes from human language: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18247893/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18247893/

143 points by studius 6y ago

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.

Swizec 6y 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.
- yowlingcat 6y 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-mouthed-parrots-for-swearing-too-much.html https://www.mlive.com/news/2020/09/zoo-separates-foul-mouthe...
  - Swizec 6y ago
    Depends on the species. Mine doesn’t talk, he instead learned to whistle. His species (sun conure) doesn’t normally whistle, he picked it up from me. It’s more pleasant than the 80db screams so we encourage it. He used to say his name sort of (if you added some human pattern recognition magic) but stopped after we moved apartments. No idea why. The worst is when he mimics human speech patterns. You can tell it isn’t words but it’s close enough to distract you every time. Main thing with parrots is that they’re more work than people think. Like human children they get bored, have tantrums, internal emotional states, and respond to the same stimuli differently based on mood. And unlike children they cannot be reasoned with. Some are smart enough to lie and obscure because they have theory of mind. And they stay like that for 30 years. Some species even longer.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    I'd suggest you do some 'parrot sitting' first, look after someone's parrot for a while to see if it is something that you will really like. A lot of parrots get bought as impulse buys by people who have absolutely no idea what it is like to actually have a parrot and to have to take care of it.
    - yowlingcat 6y ago
      Yeah, that's always the right answer. I've gone through this mental exercise multiple times before -- I want to get a parrot! But they live a long time and are extremely intelligent. They're very independent and when they are unhappy can become destructive. Am I a good enough beast-keeper to pull that off? Not really. I agree with you that parrot sitting is a smart idea.
- davisr 6y ago
  > birds are smarter than you think until you spend time observing them People, too.
- danenania 6y 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.
  - Swizec 6y ago
    Some corvids can learn how to speak but I haven’t heard whether they understand the words. With parrots there’s evidence that some species learn meanings of the words they use.

hirundo 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
> "Predator!" vs "Predator?" Should have gone with "Friendship!" VS "Friendship?"
- rthomas6 6y ago
  There really are birds that have predator warning calls. Other animals even listen for them and hide when they hear them.
  - trgn 6y ago
    We can always tell when our neighbor's cat is outside when the birds in our yards start to get agitated.
    - dontcarethrow2 6y ago
      I've noticed the warning call differs at times, I hear two chirps for land based predator and three for air. Small sample size, city finches.

jungletime 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
  I think that is because of the people living near them. Were the birds even considered?
spaetzleesser 6y ago
That was pretty noticeable during the lockdowns earlier this year. It was really quiet.

yowlingcat 6y 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird

lkuty 6y ago
Yes, I just thought about that one. That's funny.

mikro2nd 6y 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 6y 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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/about/intro/
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hprotagonist 6y 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 6y 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 https://www.ors.od.nih.gov/sr/dvr/Pages/default.aspx

bmn__ 6y ago

BNF grammar and sample inputs/outputs: https://paste.debian.net/plain/1167596 https://paste.debian.net/plain/1167596 If your parser can't handle that, then it's literally dumber than a tit.

jwmhjwmh 6y 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?
- exdsq 6y ago
  Yes, ABC-D elicits a response while D-ABC doesn’t

jungletime 6y 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 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esSbc4phCjk&t=34s

tombert 6y 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.

Twisol 6y ago
I empathize, but I'm also curious -- does it change anything for you that many bird species are themselves carnivorous?
- tombert 6y 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.
  - exdsq 6y ago
    I believe humans still require vitamin B12 which we can only get from meat, however you can supplement this via plant-based milk and other ingredients.

debbiedowner 6y ago

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