Vocal Production Learning
Intro
Vocal production learning (VPL) also known as vocal mimcry is a unique trait of social animals that has evolved independantly 3 times in the bird lineage (Parrots, Songbirds, Hummingbirds).
It is a crucial component in how humans learn speech and can be viewed as the ability of an animal to imiatate sounds from its environment.
Vocal learning is important throughout a parrots life, being used in mating aswell as territory defence.
However some researchers have suggested that the high use of vocal learning seen in parrots may be for social foraging tactics more than any other role, with vocal learning allowing for better communication and coordination between groups.
Songbird
Hummingbird
Mimicry Ability
At birth, it has been suggested that parrots have fewer vocalisations when compared to their closest relatives, Songbirds. This could be due to Parrots having a higher dependance on the environment to learn vocalisations.
This may also contribute to why they have life-long vocal learning and show great flexibility in the sounds they can imitate.
The AAC (mentioned earlier) also contributes to this as it has a unique ability to make neurons recycle similar activity patters for sound that have shared acoustic properties (essentially the brain can use sounds it has hard before to mimic neurons)
- The AAC is also finely tuned for pitch as well as harmonic structure.
Another unique trait of Parrots is their ability to copy allospecific sounds – learning words as well as when they are to be used.
Factors that affect VPL
There are various facctors that affect the ability of a Parrot to learn and produce sound, ranging from life-span, to body size, as well as sociability, which often means that larger species such as Macaws are often capable of more complex vocalisations when compared to smaller species.
(As mentioned in the first module, the size of the shell tissue around the vocal nuclei also has an affect of the complexity of sounds, but this is likely also linked to body size)
<
-Bigger brain
-More processing power
-Better vocalisations
The anatomy of the syrinx also plays a role in VPL, with Starlings (a relative of parrots) expressing great accuracy in mimicing multiphonic sounds, due to having independant control over specific syrinx muscles, whereas parrots, which dont posses this trait, can still mimic sounds, but do tend to be less accurate.
Before you you go onto the last module, below are some examples of vocal mimicry from all 3 groups of vocal mimicking birds, but there are much better videos that I couldn't use so if your interested i'd definately have a look.
Parrot singing (2:53)
Songbird shoots lasers (0:53)
Hummingbird