Countless YouTube videos feature pet birds singing and talking to their owners. Although it may seem like simple mimicry, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. GrrlScientist writes about evolution, ecology, behavior and health. But one thing that Mozart probably never knew about his ...

Not all pet birds have the physical or cognitive ability to learn songs, and understanding the difference can help owners set ...

Bats have garnered oodles of attention in previous weeks as they’ve been identified as potential carriers of the infamous coronavirus behind COVID-19. But in addition to being rather ubiquitous ...

Vocal learning complexity, or the ability to imitate sounds, is associated with better problem-solving abilities and larger brains in songbird species, according to a new study. Whether vocal learning ...

For decades, scientists have known that only a few groups of birds—songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds—can learn to produce new sounds. But a new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume ...

The European starling boasts a remarkable repertoire. Versatile songbirds that learn warbles, whistles, calls, and songs throughout their lives, starlings rank among the most advanced avian vocal ...

A symphony of synapses fires every time a songbird sings. For Erich Jarvis, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University, the neural pathways he finds particularly interesting inside a bird’s brain are ...

A very interesting study was just published that finds many parrots use words in appropriate contexts. This study, based on an analysis of almost 900 companion parrots as reported by a flock of ...

The better a songbird is at working its way around obstacles to retrieve a snack, the more complex its vocal learning ability will be. The European starling boasts a remarkable repertoire. Versatile ...