The study began when a research team searching for a critically endangered Australian bird noticed something unusual: The birds they encountered weren’t singing the songs the researchers expected to hear.
They didn’t sound anything like a regent honeyeater — they sounded like a different species,” Dr. Ross Crates, a member of the Difficult Bird Research Group at the Australian National University in Canberra, told BBC News.
Crates and his team realized that the birds were so endangered (there are only 300 left in the wild) that their limited contact with other regent honeyeaters prevented them from learning traditional calls.
“They don’t get the chance to hang around with other honeyeaters and learn what they’re supposed to sound like,” Crates told BBC News.
Crates and his team shared their findings in Proceedings of the Royal Society B on Wednesday. In the article, the scientists explained that animals, like humans, have cultures that only exist through interaction. When a population declines, so does the culture, and this in turn can lead to further population decline.
The researchers found that 27 percent of male regent honeyeaters were singing songs that differed from the regional norm. Twelve percent of the males did not even sing their own species’ songs, instead singing the songs of other species. This 12 percent lived in areas where regent honeyeaters are especially rare.
This loss of the birds’ “vocal culture” has important conservation implications: The birds that sang different songs were less likely to find mates and produce offspring....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...