Abstract
Vocal learning in animals and humans.
Highlights
Cite this article: Vernes SC, Janik VM, Fitch WT, Slater PJB. 2021 Vocal learning in animals and humans
Just how widespread vocal learning is, and how it impacts on the natural lives of animals that show it, is a subject that has only been illuminated relatively recently and continues to raise interesting and challenging questions, many of them investigated by articles in this issue
Almost 250 years ago, in a paper published in this very journal, observations by Daines Barrington ( Vice President of the Royal Society) raised such questions [2]
Summary
That some animals can learn the sounds they produce has been known for millennia [1], most notably through the ability of birds like parrots to copy human speech. Wrens and goldfinches look very different and their songs are extremely distinctive so a good observer such as Barrington had no difficulty in concluding that one of the latter had learnt the song of the former (see Page 256 in figure 1) Moving on from this discovery to looking at the role of this learning ability in the natural lives of animals needed later technical advances. Thorpe [3] carried out one of the first experimental studies of vocal learning and, in addition to using the tape recorders which had recently been developed, he recorded the songs of his chaffinches with a stylus on lacquer-coated discs He found this in some ways preferable as one could see where the needle had registered a sound on the disc without going right through the recording to find it.
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