All air-breathing vertebrates have a larynx—a structure of muscles and folds that protects the trachea and, in many animals, vibrates and modulates to produce a stunning array of sounds. But birds, ...

A baby's babbling may sound like nonsense, but it's actually an extended act of trial-and-error learning. As babies produce ...

When birds and humans sing it sounds completely different, but now new research reported in the journal Nature Communications shows that the very same physical mechanisms are at play when a bird sings ...

In the United States, you’re rarely far from a road. And as you get closer to one, or other bits of human infrastructure, bird populations decline. But are the birds avoiding our cars or the noises ...

“I’m… so… tired.” One September morning, you’ll hear those three plaintive, descending notes emerge from the edge of the yard, a new sound in this quiet ...

Over a decade ago, behavioral ecologist Diane Colombelli-Négrel was wiring superb fairy wrens’ nests to record the birds’ sounds when she noticed something odd. Mother fairy wrens sang while ...

Like humans who can instantly tell which friend or relative is calling by the timbre of the person's voice, zebra finches have a near-human capacity for language mapping. If songbirds could appear on ...

Birds, although they have larynges, use a different organ to sing. Called a syrinx, it's a uniquely avian feature. Now, a team that brings together physics, biology, computation and engineering finds ...