Singing eggs for embryos to learn

2012/11/14 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ekologia
• Biologia
• Zoologia

Australian birds Malurus cyaneus learn fast by singing before birth. While they are in the egg, their mother teaches them a note that will work as a password and at birth, the chites have to repeat that note, because if not, the parents will not feed. This allows parents to know that nesting is their descendants and that they are not feeding a cuckoo.

Researchers at the Flinders University of Adelaide have now seen that chites learn the password they should use in this call when they are embryos, as published in the journal Current Biology. When the female realized that she was singing eggs in the nest, they began to investigate this question. All the chits of the same nest saw that they sing the same melody, different in each nest, and that in that melody there is a password sung by the mother to the eggs. And use the same password to order food from the female. When the researchers chanted another nest, the parents did not feed the chickens. And to show that the songs were learned or genetic, they changed their nest eggs. In this case, the chites sang what their stepmother taught them.

However, cuckoos do not learn melody. Researchers believe that there may not be enough time to do so. Lessons begin 10 days after laying eggs, and chites are 5 days before birth to learn the melody. The cuckoos are born before to be able to throw the other eggs from the nest, so they only have a couple of days left to learn the melody. However, this anti-cuckoo technique does not always work for them. Two species of cuckoo try to deceive these birds. Those of a species always perceive it, but the others only perceive it in 40%. According to the researchers, the latter try to invent the password by singing different melodies.