For decades, scientists have known that only a few groups of birds—songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds—can learn to produce new sounds. But a new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology reveals ...

The reorganization of neural activity during sleep helps young songbirds to develop the vocal skills they display while awake. Practice, or auditory feedback, may also play a role in learning.

A symphony of synapses fires every time a songbird sings. For Erich Jarvis, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, the neural pathways he finds particularly interesting inside a bird’s brain are ...

One of the ways we try to understand the origins of human intelligence is by looking at its equivalents elsewhere in the animal world. But doing so turns out to be more complicated than it might seem.

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A western meadowlark sings its mating song Danita Delimont/Gallo Images Roots RF collection via Getty Images Waking up to the dawn ...

It’s not just great minds that think alike. Dozens of the genes involved in the vocal learning that underpins human speech are also active in some songbirds. And knowing this suggests that birds could ...

Cristina Robinson received funding from the NIH and Vanderbilt University. Kate Snyder receives funding from the National Science Foundation and Vanderbilt University. Nicole Creanza has received ...

Waking up to the dawn chorus of birds – one of the natural world’s greatest symphonies – is a joy like no other. It is not surprising that bird-watching has become an increasingly popular hobby. A ...