An ornithological study reveals that babbler birds can communicate like humans with their own distinctive sounds, according to a Tech Times report.
To the untrained ear, these sounds may appear ordinary, but researchers found that they signify specific codes and messages. These birds create their specific sounds to express what they think.
Andy Russel from the University of Exeter said that this is the first evidence outside of a human that an animal can use the same meaningless sounds in different arrangements to generate new meaning. It's a very basic form of word generation.
The chestnut-brown babbler for example, a bird commonly found in the Australian outback, does not sing, but pieces together a series of meaningless sound that is actually its own form of language.
The LA Times noted that the researchers tried decoding this bird language by comparing it to music. They defined "A" and "B" parts and labeled the same parts of calls by different different letters. For example, babblers produce an "AB" sound during flight. When feeding chicks, their young call out in a "BAB" pattern.
The babblers looked to the nest when researchers played the BAB sound, while they looked at the sky for a possible flight upon hearing the AB pattern. It was the arrangement of elements rather than the sound that carried meaning.
From a linguistic perspective, researchers believed that these varied formation of calls can change the meaning the bird is expressing, similar to the difference between "Dog bites man" and "Man bites dog."
A report on the subject from the Sydney Morning Herald, however, stated that this mode of communication is extremely limited, as these two sounds could be theoretically used in making all types of call combinations. However, it is still unclear if any linguistic complexity is involved, as the babblers are just using them for two different calls.
Still, this study could serve as the key in unlocking a better understanding of how our Stone Age ancestors developed language skills.
The full study on the calls of chestnut-brown babblers and its relevance to the evolution of human language was published in the journal PLOS Biology.
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