These birds have learned to tweet like R2-D2. Listen to the strange results

These birds have learned to tweet like R2-D2. Listen to the strange results

By Kate Graham-Shaw edited by Andrea Thompson

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, R2-D2 beeped and hooted – and now the birds that copy the Star Wars These characters give scientists new insight into how different species imitate complex sounds. A study, recently published in Scientific reports, analyzed the sounds of nine species of parrots, including parakeets, as well as European starlings, to see how accurately each bird imitated R2-D2’s robotic whirring sound.

The researchers performed acoustic analyzes on samples of birds mimicking the plucky droid already available online to compare the statistical similarity of each bird’s noises to a model of R2-D2’s sounds. Starlings, a type of songbird, became star singers: their ability to produce “multiphonic” noises (in their case, two different notes or tones voiced simultaneously) allowed them to more accurately reproduce R2-D2’s complex chirps. Parrots and parakeets, which only produce “monophonic” (or single-tone) noises, imitated the droid’s sounds with less precision and musicality.

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The different abilities come from physical variations in the birds’ syrinx, a unique vocal organ located at the base of the avian trachea. “Starlings can produce two sounds at once because they independently control both sides of the syrinx,” explains Nick Dam, co-author of the study and an evolutionary biologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. “Parrots are physically incapable of producing two tones simultaneously.”

It is unclear why different species have evolved different control over their syrinxes. “It’s likely that an ancestor of songbirds evolved the ability to control muscles on both sides of the syrinx, and that helped them in some way,” says Lauryn Benedict, a biologist at the University of Northern Colorado who was not involved in the study but sometimes works with its authors. One of the main explanations concerns mating; The better a male songbird is at singing, the more females he attracts.

Although the study is “a very elegant way of approaching the question of whether starlings versus parrots are able to produce the same sound with the same precision,” it doesn’t fully address the level of training or rewards the birds received, says Nicole Creanza, an evolutionary biologist at Vanderbilt University, who was also not involved in the research.

Benedict agrees that researchers could work with the public to conduct more tightly controlled trials. (And she and other scientists are seeking public submissions of other examples of sound-imitating parrots for their “The Many Parrots Project”). “A larger sample size would be really nice,” she says, “and they could test all kinds of different sounds, not just R2-D2!”

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