A baby babbles from his snug resting place. The baby’s sounds include some adult sounds, only they’re not organized like an adult’s. As the baby gets older, his sounds get less random, and there’s a turning point at which his parents suddenly get what he’s saying. Does that sound familiar?
This description is of a baby bird, a zebra finch. It highlights the similarities between how birds learn to sing and how humans learn to talk. In both birds and humans, newborns experiment with sounds in a seeming trial-and-error process of organizing them into something resembling their parents’ sounds. For both baby humans and hatchling birds, their babbling is also a form of gratifying play.
Learning by Hearing
Only birds and some mammals (humans and other primates, whales, seals, elephants, bats, goats,
