what animals are vocal learners

Animals that are able to talk like humans are all “vocal learners,” BBC explains. They hear sounds and learn how to imitate them. Besides humans, some of the most skilled vocal learners include parrots, songbirds, dolphins, and beluga whales.

Full Answer

What are some examples of vocal learning animals?

A rare trait, vocal learning is a critical substrate for spoken language and has only been detected in eight animal groups despite the wide array of vocalizing species; these include humans, bats, cetaceans, pinnipeds ( seals and sea lions ), elephants, and three distantly related bird groups including songbirds, parrots,...

What animal can talk like a human?

Animals that are able to talk like humans are all “vocal learners,” BBC explains. They hear sounds and learn how to imitate them. Besides humans, some of the most skilled vocal learners include parrots, songbirds, dolphins, and beluga whales. Plus, here are more animals you didn’t know could talk.

What do we know about vocal learning in birds?

As avian vocal learners are the most amenable to experimental manipulations, the vast majority of work to elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms of vocal learning has been conducted with zebra finches, with a few studies focusing on budgerigars and other species.

Are humans the only primates capable of complex vocal learning?

In primates, only humans are known to be capable of complex vocal learning. Similar to the first hypothesis relating to birds, one explanation is that vocal learning evolved independently in humans.

What animals use vocal communication?

Examples include frogs, hammer-headed bats, red deer, humpback whales, elephant seals, and songbirds. Other instances of vocal communication include the alarm calls of the Campbell monkey, the territorial calls of gibbons, and the use of frequency in greater spear-nosed bats to distinguish between groups.

Are humans the only animal that show vocal learning?

Humans are the only primate uncontroversially considered to be vocal learners, whereas nonhuman primates are considered of little relevance in this regard.

What animal is vocal?

Only a few groups of animals fall into the vocal-learning camp: humans, songbird species, and some nonhuman mammals, including dolphins, whales, elephants, seals and bats.

Are rodents vocal learners?

But in these experiments, researchers from Duke University in North Carolina say they found that mice have both the brain circuits and the behavioural attributes consistent with vocal learning.

What is vocal learning in birds?

Abstract. Vocal learning is the modification of vocal output by reference to auditory information. It allows for the imitation and improvisation of sounds that otherwise would not occur.

Why do some animals sound like humans?

Animals mimic human speech! These animals have a special circuit in the frontal lobes of their brains, making them vocal learners. Only a handful of animals have these circuits, which gives them the ability to mimic human speech and other sounds they hear around them.

What is the most vocal animal?

Top 10 Loudest AnimalsLion: 110db. Lions can roar up to 110 db. ... Hyena: 112db. Hyenas are dogged little animals. ... Grey Wolf: 115db. One of the most famous animals known for its howls is the grey wolf. ... Elephant: 117db. ... Howler Monkeys: 128db. ... Kakapo: 132db. ... Green Grocer Cicada: 135db. ... Bulldog Bat: 140db.More items...

What is the most talkative animal?

The Most Talkative BirdsAmazon Parrots. There are many subspecies of the Amazon parrot, with several of them ranking high in speech capability. ... African Grey Parrots. Both the Congo and Timneh subspecies are known for being super intelligent. ... Parakeets. Parakeets are very popular pets, and it isn't hard to see why.

Are there animals that like music?

Studies show that animals do like music. In fact, when animals pay any attention to cross-species songs, they exhibit thoughts and behavior that are frighteningly analogous to humans. It has even been known to cause behavior change across species.

Do mice sing to their babies?

They've learned that infant mice also use similar ultrasonic sounds to call to their mothers. And female mice sing to one another to help distinguish individuals, much as a human might use her voice to say, “You look familiar.

How do mice learn?

A key component of the mice's "rapid" learning is a phenomenon that the researchers dubbed "sudden insight." In more traditional mouse learning experiments, such as the steering wheel task, the lab mouse will tend to learn slowly, gradually improving at doing the task correctly.

What is vocal production learning?

Vocal production learning, the ability to modify the structure of vocalizations as a result of hearing those of conspecifics or sometimes other species, either live or from a recording [1], has received concentrated research attention in birds since the advent of the sound spectrograph in the 1950s [2].

Do any other animals have vocal cords?

Reptiles, amphibians, and mammals all have a larynx, a voice box at the top of the throat that protects the airways. Folds of tissue there—the vocal cords—can also vibrate to enable humans to talk, pigs to grunt, and lions to roar.

Will any animals ever be able to talk?

Futurologist Ian Pearson recently predicted that by 2050 it will be possible to implant devices into our pets and other animals to give them the ability to speak to us.

Can other animals evolve to speak?

Evolution of Speech Research has shown that some primate species, such as vervet monkeys, use "words" to label things (what we would call semantics in human language). Some species even combine calls into simple "sentences" (what we would think of as syntax).

Can any other animals speak?

No, animals do not speak a language humans don't understand. Although animals communicate using methods such as gestures, movements, vocal calls and their sense of smell, they lack the flexibility in their hardware to produce complex sounds that resemble utterances like human language.

What animal sounds bigger than it really is?

Some animals -- red deer, for example -- sound "bigger" than they really are, meaning they produce calls that are lower than would be expected based on their body size, according to Garcia and his colleagues.

What animal produces higher calls than would be expected given its size?

In their analysis of the vocal tendencies among several species, they noted that the manatee, or sea cow, produces calls that are higher than would be expected given its size, they said.

Is a manatee a vocal animal?

This may mean that the manatee, which to date has not been considered an animal capable of vocal learning, may have hidden vocal talents, the researchers said.

Do dolphins sound higher than they would be expected?

Contrary to expectations, most vocal learners, such as dolphins, whales and seals, sounded higher than would be expected based on their body size, not lower, the researchers said.

Do dolphins make higher pitches?

Dolphins and other mammals capable of learning sounds may emit calls at higher pitches, a new study suggests. File photo by Neirfy/Shutterstock

What animals can talk like humans?

They hear sounds and learn how to imitate them. Besides humans, some of the most skilled vocal learners include parrots, songbirds, dolphins, and beluga whales. Plus, here are more animals you didn’t know could talk.

Which part of the brain helps animals learn to make sounds?

The region of the brain that allows certain animals to imitate speech is the forebrain. According to research from the New York Academy of Sciences, the brain circuits in the forebrain help animals to learn new sounds and then use their vocal tract muscles to produce those sounds.

Can animals talk?

Animals that can talk are social species, and most of the animals that have this special skill develop it while they’re in captivity. Since they’re separated from their own kind, they interact with humans and pick up on their vocal cues and then learn how to speak themselves.

Can Animals Acquire Human Language?

It would seem that animals can acquire languages if they are able to speak them. The use of signs by animals to obtain things they were interested in has been limited, but some limited successes have been achieved. The linguistic capability of animals has yet to be developed like that of children, who are already three years old.

Do Any Animals Have An Actual Language?

The researchers say that non-human animals do not have a true language like humans, and that they do not speak the same language as humans. Sounds and gestures are used to communicate with each other, however. The emotions that animals express are inborn, but they are not the words we see in the human language as they are not formed by natural means.

Which animal has the most vocal learners?

Interestingly, he noticed that especially voluble vocal learners "tend to be near the top of the food chain — like humans, whales , and dolphins or elephants.

What are the two groups of animals that learn to speak?

According to Jarvis, animals can be split into two broad groups: nonvocal (or "innate") learners, and vocal learners, animals that learn to vocalize by imitating sounds. Only a few groups of animals fall into the vocal-learning camp: humans, songbird species, and some nonhuman mammals, including dolphins, whales, elephants, seals and bats .

Why is Jarvis interested in vocal learners?

Jarvis is interested in why these vocal learners vocalize more often, and more complexly. On one hand, there's a huge advantage to vocalizing a lot.

What are some examples of animal communication?

You might assume that one driving factor of animal communication would be how social the species is. It's true that some highly social species are also more voluble; for example, flocking birds such as quelea are constantly cacophonous on the wing. Then, there are mammals like the meerkat, a small, mongoose-like creature from southern Africa that lives in large, gregarious communities that cooperatively raise young, forage and look out for predators.

What does it mean when a bird sings a complex song?

Effectively, birds could be saying, "Look what a complex song I can sing! That means I must be a really good father, " Kershenbaum said. In some sense, vocal acrobatics may be a substitute for colorful plumage, which is another way birds attract mates.

Why do animals need to communicate?

As a general rule, animals that are solitary need to communicate simpler messages to the rest of the world , compared with animals that live in cooperative groups where communication is necessary to maintain social hierarchies, locate and share food and alert one another to threats. "You can see that if you're in a cooperative group, there may be more to say than if you're living on your own," Kershenbaum said.

What animal calls have specific meanings?

There is evidence that some animal calls have specific meanings (a type of information researchers call referential communication) that could be considered word-like. For example, some monkeys issue specific alarm calls that signify a predator threat, and dolphins have distinct whistling sounds for different relatives.

What is the classification of a vocal learner?

Historically, species have been classified into the binary categories of vocal learner or vocal non-learner based on their ability to produce novel vocalizations or imitate other species, with evidence from social isolation, deafening studies, and cross-fostering experiments.

What is vocal learning?

Vocal learning is distinct from auditory learning, or the ability to form memories of sounds heard, a relatively common trait which is present in all vertebrates tested. For example, dogs can be trained to understand the word "sit" even though the human word is not in its innate auditory repertoire (auditory learning).

How do primates learn to speak?

Other studies argue that non-human primates do have some limited vocal learning ability, demonstrating that they can modify their vocalizations in a limited fashion through laryngeal control and lip movements. For example, chimpanzees in both captivity and in the wild have been recorded producing novel sounds to attract attention. By puckering their lips and making a vibrating sounds, they can make a "raspberry" call, which has been imitated by both naïve captive and wild individuals. There is also evidence of an orangutan learning to whistle by copying a human, an ability previously unseen in the species. A cross-fostering experiment with marmosets and macaques showed convergence in pitch and other acoustic features in their supposedly innate calls, demonstrating the ability, albeit limited, for vocal learning.

Why do harem holders vocalize?

Harem holders frequently vocalize to keep peripheral males away from females, and these vocalizations are the dominant component in a young juvenile's acoustic habitat. Successful vocalizations are heard by juveniles, who then imitate these calls as they get older in an attempt to obtain a harem for themselves. Novel vocal types expressed by dominant males spread quickly through populations of breeding elephant seals and are even imitated by juveniles in the same season.

How did birds evolve?

Modern birds supposedly evolved from a common ancestor around the Cretaceous -Paleogene boundary at the time of the extinction of dinosaurs, about 66 million years ago. Out of the thirty avian orders, only three evolved vocal learning and all have incredibly similar forebrain structures despite the fact that they are distantly related (for example, parrots and songbirds are as distantly related as humans and dolphins ). Phylogenetic comparisons have suggested that vocal learning evolved among birds at least two or three independent times, in songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds. Depending on the interpretation of the trees, there were either three gains in all three lineages or two gains, in hummingbirds and the common ancestor of parrots and songbirds, with a loss in the suboscine songbirds. There are several hypotheses to explain this phenomenon:

Why do goats modify their calls?

When goats are placed in different social groups, they modify their calls to show more similarity to that of the group, which provides evidence they may be limited vocal learners according to Erich Jarvis' continuum hypothesis.

How do dolphins emit sounds?

Captive bottlenose dolphins ( Tursiops truncatus) can be trained to emit sounds through their blowhole in open air. Through training, these vocal emissions can be altered from natural patterns to resemble sounds like the human voice, measurable through the number of bursts of sound emitted by the dolphin. In 92% of exchanges between humans and dolphins, the number of bursts equaled ±1 of the number of syllables spoken by a human. Another study used an underwater keyboard to demonstrate that dolphins are able to learn various whistles in order to do an activity or obtain an object. Complete mimicry occurred within ten attempts for these trained dolphins. Other studies of dolphins have given even more evidence of spontaneous mimicry of species-specific whistles and other biological and computer-generated signals.

Introduction

• That some animals can learn the sounds they produce has been known for millennia [1], most notably through the ability of birds like parrots to copy human speech. But just how widespread vocal learning is, and how it impacts on the natural lives of animals that show it, is a subject tha…

See more on royalsocietypublishing.org

Frameworks For Vocal Learning Across Species

Distribution of Vocal Learning in Birds and Mammals

Vocal Learning Early in Life

Computational and Modelling Approaches to Vocal Learning

Funding