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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 13257
[Animals]
Date Posted:
6/23/2005
6:42:51 pm EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 12,531
RSS: 6,909
Comments: 3
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Chickadee Song Warns Of Danger
Author: Randolph E. Schmid, Associated Press Source: ABC News
Title: CHICKADEE SONG WARNS OF DANGER
  The chirp of the chickadee is charming to humans. To other chickadees, it can convey a lot of vital information.
When the little black-capped songbird whistles "chick-a-dee-dee" it can warn flock mates to watch out: A predator is near.
Christopher N. Templeton and colleagues recorded the chickadee songs, analyzed them by situation, studied the calls on acoustic instruments, and watched the birds react when the songs were played back.
"These birds are passing on way more information than anyone ever dreamed possible, and only by carefully looking at these calls can we really appreciate how sophisticated these animals are," Templeton said in a telephone interview.
"They change a bunch of different features about the call, subtle acoustic features, the spacing between the notes, things we can't hear," he said.
One thing humans can hear, Templeton said, is the number of "dee" notes at the end of the call. "The more they add, the more dangerous the predator," he said.
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Community Thoughts: There are 3 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Cool | Jun 24th. at 4:55:48 am EDT
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ForestWolf (Cheshire, England) - Email Me
When I spend a brief time in South Africa, there were two labradors where I was staying. I learnt to speak basic Labrador quite quickly (don't laugh!) - I noticed that they had certain combinations of barks for different things, from
"Hey, come over here quick" - (I remember this one vividly, - 7 staccato barks in succession at the same pitch, about 1.5-2 barks per second -this one was a sure-fire way of getting them to race to you!)
to calls such as "They've changed the water", "Food!" and "I'm over here, where are you?".
Their language may be made of simple phonemes and have no apparent grammatical structure, but they really can communicate lots more information between eachother than we give them credit for.
BB
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| Hmm | Jun 23rd. at 10:50:07 pm EDT
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Istari (Hazel Park, Michigan) - Email Me
Reminds me of the meerkats in Africa. They have calls that warn if a predator is attacking from the air or on the ground and calls specific to certain predators, such as when a snake is lurking about.
Then, of course, there are the bees and their "waggle" dances, with much detailed information contained or encoded within. Rather specific regarding food sources and where to locate them, how rich of a food source and so forth.
Yet some say that our fellow creatures cannot think or reason!
Anyone who spends time out of doors and pays attention to the natural world around them knows otherwise.
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