New Study Resembles Song Sparrow's Ability Similar to a Spotify Playlist

Song sparrows keep track of the order of their songs (tweets) and how often each one is sung for up to 30 minutes so they can organize both their current playlist and the next one, according to a new study. Biologists believe that male song sparrows do this to in an organized manner to attract potential mates.

Biologists Compare Song Sparrow's Ability to a Spotify Playlist

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Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) is a common songbird found throughout North America, but only males are capable of singing. Male song sparrows sing to defend their territory and to court females. In the US, song sparrows are widespread in the Northeast and Midwest US, as per Audubon.

The new study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B on January 26, shows that male song sparrows are capable of reshuffling, repeating, and memorizing a 30-minute-long playlist of their songs. The study was conducted by a research team consisting of biologists in the lab of Stephen Nowicki, a professor of Duke University and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, and collaborators from the University of Miami.

The team of biologists suggests that male song sparrows intentionally do this to keep a female sparrow's attention. They observed that male song sparrows are remarkably capable of long-distance dependencies, a tendency of a male song sparrow to sing a song depending on what he remembered singing 30 minutes ago.

Just like a Spotify playlist, the biologists compared the sparrow's ability to shuffle and repeat songs all over again in a span of 30 minutes. The new study also shows male song sparrows carry up to 12 different two-second songs. Within 30 minutes, these birds are able to remember these patterns, mainly to avoid the consecutive repetition of songs and to orchestrate their succeeding songs.

Also read: Male Sparrows Wave Wings Before Engaging in Brawl

Recording of Song Sparrow Tweets

Nowicki's team and his long-time collaborator William Searcy, a professor at the University of Miami, prepared recording gear and set up microphones in the forests of northwest Pennsylvania where the team recorded five hours a day.

The team recorded data from more than 30 birds through visual spectrographs to analyzed how often male song sparrows sang each song and in what order. The biologists find that the song sparrows keep tabs on their tweets to avoid repetition.

Study's Implications to Humans

Although a variety of animals are capable of communication, the discovery implies that biologists, for the first time, found an animal in comparison with the human's complex language skill to communicate. The song sparrows' organized tweets studied by Nowicki's team is said to be comparable as a low-level form of human grammar and syntax, as per the study.

In this method, male song sparrows are able to communicate clearly. Although the new study showed breakthrough results, it is still unclear whether this has implications on humans, as per Science Daily.

Related article: Songbirds Can Sing Like Humans with Complex Vocal Cords