
A ‘viral’ new bird song in Canada is causing sparrows to change their tune - Osiris30
https://gizmodo.com/a-viral-new-bird-song-in-canada-is-causing-sparrows-t-1844245103
======
mhxion
Original journal: [https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(20)...](https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(20\)30771-5)

Watch the video at the bottom. It says:

> A hypothesis suggests that, female birds may habituate to the common songs
> over time, and that drives the male bird to adopt novel songs to maintain
> female's interest.

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vezycash
Here's a bird singing pirate of Caribbean tune

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDpR8BeLR_Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDpR8BeLR_Q)

Another singing Adam's family reunion tune

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD_tPNYgy58](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD_tPNYgy58)

And finally Star wars Darth Vader tune

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjoCi04Rxwg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjoCi04Rxwg)

~~~
nneonneo
Note that these are all cockatiels, very intelligent parrots that will readily
pick up and replay sounds they hear. This is quite distinct from sparrows and
most songbirds, which only seem to pick up certain songs.

~~~
sva_
Even more fascinating, in my opinion, are Lyrebirds [0]. They have been
observed the imitate artificial (human-made) sounds such as those of camera
shutter, chainsaws [1], and construction work [2].

Not only do I find it impressive that they're capable of producing these kinds
of sounds, but probably much more the necessary memory-recall for this. Birds
have rather little brain-mass after all, so they must have some excellent way
of 'sampling', distinguishing, and storing auditory stimuli.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird)

[1] [https://youtu.be/VjE0Kdfos4Y?t=104](https://youtu.be/VjE0Kdfos4Y?t=104)

[2] [https://youtu.be/C0ZffIh0-NA](https://youtu.be/C0ZffIh0-NA)

~~~
stan_rogers
I expect that, sometime before I die, there will be a clip of a lyrebird doing
a David Attenborough narration of a clip of a lyrebird imitating David
Attenborough marvelling at some sound that a lyrebird is making.

------
verytrivial
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_level_geolocator](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_level_geolocator)
\-- How they get rough but scientifically useful tracking information from a
device small enough to attach to a sparrow leg!

~~~
punnerud
I love this technique! Using a light sensor to measure sunset/sunrise and then
calculate the location.

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marklacey
I spent two summers in an apartment in San Francisco that was near the nest of
what I assume was a nightingale.

Every night around midnight it would start singing. It would loop through
maybe 8 songs. Some of them sounded very much like the local environment. For
example one song was pretty much identical to sirens that I would periodically
hear.

It would last for an hour or two each night. I don’t know where the bird went
the rest of the year. That was almost ten years ago and I still miss falling
asleep to that.

~~~
Cerium
In San Jose we have birds that imitate car alarms. I don't like them at all.

~~~
NamTaf
The Lyrebird from Australia is probably the best at this. It can imitate just
about anything - car alarms, other birdsongs, camera shutters, gunshots, etc.
etc.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSB71jNq-
yQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSB71jNq-yQ)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird#Vocalizations_and_mim...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyrebird#Vocalizations_and_mimicry)

------
jojobas
Related: lyrebirds passing on flute tunes long after the guy who played them
died.

[https://www.chonday.com/lynibird18/](https://www.chonday.com/lynibird18/)

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wodenokoto
Back before the iPhone when Nokia was the defacto phone, there were news
stories that birds had started to chime the Nokia ringtone or the Nokia sms
chime.

Back then I totally believed it, but I’ve grown skeptic, but it looks like it
is not completely outlandish.

~~~
bayindirh
I had an Alcatel One Touch Easy and One Touch Max. Both had high chirpy tones
and powerful speakers.

My budgerigar have learnt that I always responded to SMS tone of the phones
and started to mimic them when she wanted some time with me. She did them with
pinpoint accuracy so, it was impossible to tell whether it was the phone or
her.

She also chirped parts of the ringtones for fun. Also we had a tune between
us. I'd whistle a specific tune and she'd respond back with the same tune (or
vice versa). It was a kind of pinging each other.

~~~
notRobot
That last bit is so cute :)

~~~
bayindirh
Thanks. She was very intelligent and very loving. :)

------
tinus_hn
Next up: getting birds to sing your advertising jingles

~~~
bbarnett
ROTFL, enter nest seeking drone. A small, low powered device with solar panels
gets auto-clamped a few feet from nest.

For the first few weeks of life, baby birds hear your tune, driving it deep
into their very essence of self.

I am bird, ergo I sing this.

------
henearkr
I wonder, if I play this video during a walk in the nearby mountain in Japan,
will the song be picked up by the local species? The scientists would have a
new mystery on their hands lol!

~~~
xoa
> _if I play this video during a walk in the nearby mountain in Japan_

I know you're probably joking here, but since it's an important area of honest
lack of knowledge I really want to point: please please don't ever do this
everyone. Not just this video specifically but play any bird song at all
outside. Many of the guide apps these days for example have collections of
bird songs for each species as another aid in identification, and sometimes
people play them to try to attract said birds to see them.

But this can genuinely screw things up for a few poor birds and be another
pebble of human caused misery added onto species in trouble. Birds use song in
part as a gauge for health and thus mating and territory. This is intuitive if
you think about it: to produce more, better song requires a strong healthy
respiratory system, syrinx and so on. But no bird can match the output of
speakers, and recorded song samples are often chosen for being particularly
clear and high quality. So if you play it, females may spend their time
searching around for this incredible magnificent perfect specimen of
birdliness who doesn't exist, and refuse to mate with other males. And other
males themselves may just leave the territory.

If you've got a single well fit earphone or something of that order and play
at low volume that can work, or else make recordings of the songs then replay
them and try to identify them after getting back indoors. But all those songs
are just for show and fun, they're an important part of bird life cycles, so
please be careful to enjoy them without disrupting them.

~~~
xwdv
This is similar to what happens with humans. Females will use an app to
quickly scroll through a lot of men, but because they are presented with so
many options they will gravitate only toward the top tier men. But the top
tier men can only be with so many females, so the majority of females will not
get the top tier. However, their standards will still be raised and they will
not settle for someone lower. So females will continue searching for this
perfect specimen of men and refuse to mate with other males. The other males
end up leaving the app and revenue is lost.

~~~
staticman2
In the real world people seem to still be reproducing and mating and marrying.
So no, this story of women no longer pairing with men due to apps making them
picker doesn't ring true.

~~~
Smithalicious
Human reproduction is below maintenance in most first world countries

~~~
staticman2
Which is presumably due to birth control and other unrelated factors. To back
up the claim that women are no longer looking to pair with men due to apps you
can't use reproduction statistics.

------
_spduchamp
You can train starlings to speak.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhBaVInb3jI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhBaVInb3jI)

This is the medium of Brian D Collier's brilliant art project Teach the
Starlings
[http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm](http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/html/intro.htm)

~~~
lisper
Wow, that was really impressive.

But your second link is broken. I think it should be:

[http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/introduction.html](http://teachstarlings.societyrne.net/introduction.html)

This bit is hilarious:

> HOW TO TEACH STARLINGS THEIR NEW CALL

> The first and most simple strategy is to find a starling and shout
> "Schieffelin" to it.

------
Ericson2314
I have no idea what's "doublet" or "triplet" about the two bird songs. If they
just mean the number of notes, it almost seems like they got the labeling
backwards.

~~~
athriren
It’s the phrasing of the notes. The “triplet” ending song goes da, da, da da
da, da da da. The “doublet” ending song goes da, da, da da, da da, da da.

Disclaimer: I am not a music theory wizard, but I do play drums.

~~~
Ericson2314
Rhythm is not these birds strong point, but I can sort of make out a barely-
articulated 3rd in not the first one?

------
daodedickinson
Never found a video of killdeer online that sounded anything like the killdeer
at my home have sounded like the last 30 or so years.

~~~
stallmanite
Now’s your chance to become an obscure YouTube birdsong maven.

------
Avshalom
Oh I've seen this movie before
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontypool_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontypool_\(film\))

~~~
mistersquid
OK so yours is a bit of a troll, and at some risk of feeding, I'll offer that
_Pontypool_ is such a conceptually amazing film, exploring as it does the
intersection of language, media, and mortality.

------
snvzz
These two phrases... to me they seem like the new one "answers" to the old
one.

Maybe it's something to do with it. They're happy they found a "continuation"
to the previous phrase.

------
cvs268
By now, birds must have developed a low opinion of us hoomans and our "cold-
calling" techniques!

We either post mating calls, the bird equivalent of "Singles in your area..."
or post danger calls, the bird equivalent of trolling flamebait.

I bet there's a market opportunity for a HN for Birds!

------
ericol
To keep up with the current times, wouldn't it be better to call it a "meme"
song?

~~~
pvaldes
One does not simply chirp, chirp, chirp with the eagles

------
joubert
Tweet memetic.

------
makapuf
So that's what you call a viral tweet.

~~~
uhhyeahdude
I have never upvoted with such reluctance.

------
yesenadam
Maybe this is common, but I just noticed it - I scrolled down a bit on the
website, and suddenly it took 5 or 6 Back button clicks to come back here.
Each mini-article loads a new URL.. Looks like you're on the same page but
seems like you're not. There's something I really don't like about that! If
you went right to the bottom, if there is one, it might take dozens of Back
clicks to get off the page. Which effectively disables your back button.

I've seen bottomless pages on sites, but they don't usually load a bunch of
URLs like that in your history, do they?

~~~
feross
This is the history.pushState() API in action. I use it on
[https://theannoyingsite.com](https://theannoyingsite.com) to fill the history
with entries to effectively disable the back button.

Also, this one is a gem:

window.addEventListener('popstate', () => { window.history.forward() })

Source code here:
[https://github.com/feross/TheAnnoyingSite.com/blob/master/st...](https://github.com/feross/TheAnnoyingSite.com/blob/master/static/index.js)

~~~
Shared404
I don't know if I hate this or love it.

~~~
fphhotchips
I loved it. I feel like I should get bonus points for killing the DVD bouncing
cat by hitting the exit button as it moved around rather than just using
Alt-F4...

~~~
Shared404
I cheated for most of the things like that.

I have tiling turned on in my DE, I didn't even realize that things were
supposed to be moving until I was almost done.

------
unicornmama
When I try to read the article on mobile, an unstoppable video fills up 1/3 of
my screen. The video is unrelated to the article and has no obvious UX to stop
or dismiss.

Gizmodo’s website is fucking stupid. Who comes up with this shit?

~~~
cavanasm
The hedge fund placed exec who has been running Gizmodo into the ground for
the last year. Part of a larger trend of user-hostile design changes that have
caused quite a lot of controversy as they attempt to extract as much value in
the short term as they can. Last time they implemented this exact change it
only lasted a few days before the writers at most of the Gizmodo sites more or
less openly revolted. It resulted in the shut down of the left leaning news
site though. I'm wondering whether we'll see a repeat, or if they'll shrug and
give up.

~~~
naavis
What kind of short term value does this kind of stuff extract? Does forcing
visitors to watch a video bring ad revenue or something?

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sunkenvicar
Sparrows moved into the neighbourhood this year. We noticed their chirping is
incredibly annoying. Turns out it’s the two-chirp version.

For us this sound doesn’t fade into the background because it sounds synthetic
or man made. About as annoying as a back up beeper on a truck.

