“According to scientists, birds signal their species, age and sex.”, — write: www.unian.ua
According to scientists, birds signal their species, age and sex.
Songbirds communicate with other species during migration / screenshotSongbirds communicate with other bird species during migration. This is evidenced by the results of a study by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, writes Phys.org.According to scientists, although it may seem that migratory birds move along routes “imprinted” by evolution, these flight paths may not be completely innate.
“Evidence from more than 18,300 hours of recorded flight signals suggests that songbirds can ‘talk’ to other species during migration, forming social bonds and possibly exchanging travel information,” the researchers said.
One can’t be sure exactly what they’re saying, they said, but birds can make sounds in flight to signal their species, age and sex.
“And we can certainly hypothesize that these signals in flight may be related to navigation or finding a suitable place to stop,” said Benjamin Van Doren, lead author of the study.
Although the scientist believes that innate patterns and memory are still important factors in migratory behavior, “it is time to rethink the migration of songbirds through a social lens”:
“In recent years there has been growing recognition of the importance of social information in bird migration, but scientists have mainly documented this in species that travel during the day or in family groups. The social environment is also important for species such as hawks and storks, which form huge aggregations during diurnal migrations “.
At the same time, these visual signs “fade out” at night, when most songbirds travel. 18,300 hours of acoustic recordings would be impossible to process and analyze without artificial intelligence. It allowed a team of scientists to quickly identify the characteristic flight calls of 27 species, including 25 songbirds. After identifying the species, the team measured how often certain calls occurred simultaneously in time, testing intervals of 15, 30, and 60 seconds. Regardless of the time interval, they found a significant interaction between species.
“The most important factors were the wingspan of the species found and the similarity of their calls. Birds that ‘friended’ during stopovers did not maintain these relationships in the air, and they did not necessarily fly with closely related species or birds that shared their preferences for certain habitats existence,” scientists say.
Other bird newsAs UNIAN reported, ornithologist Jack Dambacher talked about a bird with poisonous feathers. According to him, the bicolor pitoga is a carrier of poison through its “diet.”
We also wrote about a bird capable of catching up with a high-speed train. The peregrine falcon develops a speed of up to 300 kilometers per hour.
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