Finches – Sounds Just Like Dad

Finches Sounds Just Like Dad

Ambience: bird sounds
With Zebra finches, like many other birds, it’s the males who do the calling. But the females are playing very close attention to those calls. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Sewall: The way that birds use song is really all about trying to get the girl. So what was really interesting is that in zebra finches and other species, we have some evidence that females can learn a lot about who a male is, based on the song that he sings.

Biologist Kendra Sewall. She says that female finches listen for a male who sounds just like their father.

Sewall: So the guy with the nice bright orange cheek patches and the really bright bill is dad. He’s the tutor for all of these birds that are his babies. There’s another bird in here with sort of dull cheek patches. That’s a juvenile male. And what’s interesting about this is that the females are learning from dad just like the males are. The males will learn dad’s song and imitate it. The females don’t sing, but they’re using what dad does as a template for what they should look for in a mate.

Sewall: Both of the flocks that are in these two cages in front of us are flocks of females. And one of the reasons that it’s really interesting to look at what’s going on in females, is that they are still learning a lot of social information and they’re learning about communication and signals by listening to their fathers and to the other males around them. But they are not actually producing the songs. They have to use really different techniques to learn what they like. And what they like is generally what their dad sang, so it tells us what they’ve memorized and learned.

Pulse of the Planet is made possible in part by Virginia Tech, inventing the future through a hands-on approach to education and research. You can hear this and previous programs on our podcast.

Finches - Sounds Just Like Dad

If you're wooing a female finch, you'd better sound like her father.
Air Date:03/18/2016
Scientist:
Transcript:

Finches Sounds Just Like Dad

Ambience: bird sounds
With Zebra finches, like many other birds, it's the males who do the calling. But the females are playing very close attention to those calls. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

Sewall: The way that birds use song is really all about trying to get the girl. So what was really interesting is that in zebra finches and other species, we have some evidence that females can learn a lot about who a male is, based on the song that he sings.

Biologist Kendra Sewall. She says that female finches listen for a male who sounds just like their father.

Sewall: So the guy with the nice bright orange cheek patches and the really bright bill is dad. He's the tutor for all of these birds that are his babies. There's another bird in here with sort of dull cheek patches. That's a juvenile male. And what's interesting about this is that the females are learning from dad just like the males are. The males will learn dad's song and imitate it. The females don't sing, but they're using what dad does as a template for what they should look for in a mate.

Sewall: Both of the flocks that are in these two cages in front of us are flocks of females. And one of the reasons that it's really interesting to look at what's going on in females, is that they are still learning a lot of social information and they're learning about communication and signals by listening to their fathers and to the other males around them. But they are not actually producing the songs. They have to use really different techniques to learn what they like. And what they like is generally what their dad sang, so it tells us what they've memorized and learned.

Pulse of the Planet is made possible in part by Virginia Tech, inventing the future through a hands-on approach to education and research. You can hear this and previous programs on our podcast.