The talking ability of parrots is well known and their language skills can often be a reason people take to them as pets. Now it seems studies of another species have shown that they too may have their own impressive language skills.

The chestnut crowned babbler is a social bird and scientists studying the species believe that the meaningless noises they make are actually being formed together to create their own speech – babbling on, so to speak!

Language skills

The details of the findings come from the PLOS Biology journal and can even show how human language developed. It is also the first time scientists have glimpse the early use of meaningless sounds to create new signals, apart from when done by humans. It could even be the very first steps towards a language system, the thing that sets up humans apart from all other species.

Scientists have been studying many animals and birds from apes right down to zebra finches for signs that they could be evolving their own language and there are a few commonalities. Campbell’s monkeys, for example, have two calls when they see predators, one for one type and another for the other.

But the ability of humans to take sounds and arrange them into different meanings to make words, called ‘phonemic power’ is something unique to humans.

Babbler language

The new study has shown that the tiny chestnut crowned babbler, found in the outback of Australia, may have as many as 15 different calls for specific situations but three pairs of the calls have a quality that is unusual – they use similar sounds that are arranged in different ways.

This is unusual and something different to the normal stringing together of sounds for a song that most birds can do. Songs have a very general meaning ‘aren’t I gorgeous’ or ‘run, predator’ but the song isn’t rearranged to give it a different meaning.

With the babbler, it has three song pairs that are of interest. The scientists refer to them as A and B. While flying the birds would call AB but when in the nest it would be BAB. Both have the same sounds but are arranged differently.

The scientists then tested the birds to see if they understood the language. When the AB song was played, the birds scanned the skies looking for a fellow babbler flying in while when hearing BAB, they would look off to their nest. Even when the order of the sounds were mixed up and the original sounds added in with them, the response remained the same.

The reason the birds do this is because it is easier to rearrange well known sounds that to create completely new ones. So far, only the two calls have been distinguished but there is nothing to say that further studies won’t show that ABA, BBA and all the other combinations won’t have different meanings to these clever little birds.