Ready for some social learning Jessica McLachlan
When a bird tweets an alarm call it’s not necessarily just its family members who get the message. Some birds respond to an alarm even if it comes from a member of a different bird species – and now we have a better idea of how they learn to do so.
Robert Magrath at the Australian National University in Canberra and his colleagues played a computer-generated “buzz” to eight superb fairy-wrens in a nearby botanic gardens. None of the birds flew away and sought cover after hearing the sound.
Next, over the course…
