I often wake up in the morning to the sound of birds chirping their happy little feathers off, much to my displeasure. But I have to wonder, do these chirps have any special meanings and do other birds understand what their fellow bird is “saying”? To answer that, I look to a paper reviewing the evidence gathered over two decades that studied communication between birds. Do birds simply communicate what’s going on with themselves or can they, like humans, describe external objects and events?
Many species of birds have been studied to have complex methods of communication. Different alarm calls can indicate the enemy type, where the enemy is, and the enemy’s behavior. This information has seen to be indicated by variation in sound parameters of the call, including call length, inter-call intervals, and amplitude. High urgency alarm calls seem to often have shorter call length and intervals with higher amplitude. It has been seen that birds can learn what these calls mean from their social groups. To study all of these responses, researches had to intervene and set it up where they could illicit these calls and record them for further experimentation. Fake predators were mounted in strategic positions where the alarm calls could be recorded and feeding stations were also placed around to record calls potentially related the that subject. The call was recorded as well as the behavioral response from fellow birds. Playing back these recordings illicit the same response in the birds as it did when the original bird made the call. This is advantageous, especially in cases involving predators and identifying predator behavior because the flock could alter its own behavior to reduce the risks of being killed by the predator. The social nature of these birds leads to the need of being able to communicate more complex information regarding predators, resources, general cooperation, and competition. For this reason, some species of birds can combine different calls and alter them slightly to communicate much larger, more detailed pieces of information.
Studying this further, it could be seen what socio-ecological factors push the evolution of complex communication systems and what specifically is happening in their brains. What we still have yet to answer is, can birds produce images in their minds of the predator they are communicating about and does the receiving bird also produce a mental image of the threat that has been communicated? We know a call produces a reaction, but why? How similar is their communication system to that of humans? Will we ever be able to “speak” and understand the language of birds? This all could be pushed to studying and understanding many other species of animals as well, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
Suzuki, T. N. (2016). Semantic communication in birds: evidence from field research over the past two decades. Ecological Research, 31(3), 307-319. doi:10.1007/s11284-016-1339-x
