Relative and absolute pitch perception by birds

Abstract

European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) were trained to discriminate a class of rule‐based, four tone ascending pitch patterns from a comparable class of descending pitch patterns. Then a series of transfer tests examined the birds' ability to maintain the discrimination under various transformations of the original pitch stimuli. The birds performed well when shifts in tone height occurred to novel exemplars within the original pitch training range, but not when shifts occurred to novel exemplars outside that range. When information about the direction of pitch change was reduced by shortening the patterns, the birds could solve the discrimination on the basis of the first two tones in a pattern, although performance improved as pattern length and, therefore, amount of information increased. The same series of transfers showed that in producing accurate discrimination the birds were using pitch cues based on both an absolute and relative perception of pitch. The data have implications for a comparative stu...