Teaching birds new information

It took a long time to approach this – to study the exact mechanism of learning in birds and to find out at the same time – all this experience in recognizing danger sounds – is it innate-genetic or not? Since the article is not a novel (this is not the first article on this topic, but very recent, 2024), the immediate answer is that experience is not in the genes of either birds or humans and bears. Birds learn everything from their parents and relatives. The chicks are born essentially blank slates. As parents and the environment teach, so the bird will navigate the sounds. Let's say, if parents teach that the sound “che-che” is a danger and all the birds of this species around will do the same – the chicks will understand “che-che” as danger, and the sound ki-ki as a signal to feed. And vice versa – they will teach that “che-che” is feeding, which means the chicks will think so.

Explored Phylloscopus sibilatrix – warbler rattle. From now on I will simply call them warblers, they were studied in Poland, the species was chosen due to its extremely rapid maturation, only 10 days from hatching and the chicks can leave the nest. In the wild, during the course of evolution, this species has acquired this feature – birds feed their chicks silently, and if any threat appears nearby, they stop feeding and emit simple, monosyllabic alarm calls. It is important that warblers also settle in groups of their own species, hearing each other during such alarm signals, which ultimately increases overall safety for the birds.

For the experiment, we took two forest plots, 138 and 60 hectares each, with 3,500 meters between them. All warbler nests were numbered and pinned on the map. It was important to prove that the birds had previously been unable to hear new sounds and that the reaction to sounds was natural. 12 pairs of warblers were given 3.3 second introductory riffs to punk rock songs – The Passenger Iggy Pop and Outsider Pidżama Porno, song IP and song PP respectively. The control sound was the song of a finch in the wild; the warblers could definitely hear it before the experiment; the finch was recorded using a Sennheiser ME67/K6 directional microphone and a Zoom H6 voice recorder.

The sounds were only played when the parents were on the nest and feeding the chicks, played from a 32 GB iPod touch connected via Bluetooth, with a JBL Flip 4 speaker placed 10 m from the nest. These 12 pairs of birds were selected so that there would be at least 200 meters. That is, the birds could not directly hear each other, but if training took place between adult birds, then eventually the sound would be learned as dangerous by other birds in the group.

Next, new sounds were played, interspersed with real sounds of danger from wild warblers. Each pair was trained this way 5 times a day. 5 pairs were taught sound IPand 7 pairs of sound PP. In order to completely eliminate accidents, in addition to this cycle, the couples were allowed to listen 5 times to just another, new sound, but without alternately turning on the sound of danger. An example of background noise, and even a new one, this is something to check – and if you just listen to a new sound – what will happen? The birds' reactions were recorded using a Nikon d7200 SLR camera with a Nikkor 18–105 mm lens and a Sennheiser ME67/K6 microphone.

Results – before the start of training, all pairs of warblers responded to sounds IP And PP, just like the sounds of a finch. After training, the birds accepted the sounds of human music as a signal of danger, and those birds that were not taught this way continued to show no caution.

,It is interesting that, like people, warblers, different pairs learned differently. 7 out of 11 pairs, after the first day of training, remembered the sounds of human songs as sounds of danger. During the training process, one nest was destroyed (as I understand it, they deliberately decided to sacrifice one). After this event, 7 pairs of warblers were tested. Of these, 4 pairs, who from the first day of training reacted to new sounds as a danger signal, became even more clearly afraid of new sounds. But 3 other pairs ignored both sounds during the second test.

Subsequently, knowledge of new danger sounds spread to the remaining pairs throughout the observed territory. It was confirmed that the chicks learn from their parents, and the parents, in turn, are able to learn new sound-danger combinations, and the sound can be either natural or ours – human.

Essentially, bird communities are sensor-bytes, self-learning networks that absorb information. The death of one couple or several will not collapse the knowledge system. Those who remained alive will remember the new sounds that preceded the death of their comrades and will be more careful in the future. At the same time, there are clearly those birds that will not learn new things, well, it’s worse for them.

The article also highlights that previously communities of birds of the same species were considered as a competitive environment – the same “food basket”, competition for females and nesting sites. But this experiment showed that it is in communities that it is easier for birds to survive, since they can learn from each other faster than smart people. Individual birds within a community may be worse off, but overall all birds are much better off living together.

Basic article in English – Auditory risk recognition is socially transmitted across territory borders in wild birds Link.