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The vocal talent of starlings havebeen known since antiquity, when Pliny considered their ability to mimic humanspeech noteworthy. Ornithologist know that this species possesses a rich repertoireof call and songs, composed of whistles, clicks, snarls, and screeches. Inaddition, starlings are well know for their ability to mimic the sounds ofother animals or even mechanical noises. Descriptions of starling song in thepast reflect the difficulty of describing all the variety of sounds included.Witherby mentioned a “lively rambling medlody of throaty warbling, chiring,clicking and gurgling notes interspersed with musical whistles and pervaded bya peculiar creaking quality.” This complexity explains why detailedstudies of starling song have delayed long after the arrival of the soundspectrograph. As mentioned by West & King, “the problem with starlings isthat they vocalized too much, too often and in too great numbers, sometimes inchoruses numbering in the thousands. Even the seemingly elementary step ofcreating an accurate catalogue of the vocal repertoire of wild starlings is anintimidating task because of the variety of their sounds.”
Chaiken have compared the sons ofyoung males raised in different social conditions: either with a wild-caughtadult song tutor, individually housed but tape-tutored by a tape-recording orraised in total isolation. All birds had been taken from the nest at an earlyage (8-10 days) and were hand raised. Untutored birds produced mostly anabnormal song, where even the basic organization of song was missing. Incontrast, both tape- and live-tutored birds develped songs with a normal basicorganization, but with some syntactical abnormalities for the tape-tutoredbirds. Tape-tutored birds had repertoires half as large as those oflive-tutored birds. Large differences occurred between both groups of birds intheir … 请问楼主,鸟学话是这篇文章么? |
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