Finches babble too!

You won't believe this! A tiny finch baby babbles like a human cute baby! Have you ever thought why a baby babbles?

Scientists [1] investigated this question by conducting an exciting experiment on little finch babies. The babies hear a song after hatch, for example, a simple song in the form of abc, abc, ... Very interestingly, they start babbling this song after about 40 days listening, then, after 20 days practice, they can imitate it as pretty the same as their tutor.

Still the question remains, "How important is this babbling phase for song learning?" What if we somehow stop a bird to babble? Can she still produce the song the same as her tutor? The scientists [2] thought of deafening some finches after they listened to their tutor. Of course, this approach is doable with animals, not humans. Can you guess what happened to their song imitation? Babies never went beyond the babbling phase. Babbling, without really hearing their voice, did not help them fine-tune their voice. They could not internally check whether what they sing matches their tutor song. Poor birds!

Moral: "Don't be embarrassed of repeating aloud a lesson you have recently learned."

[1] Marler P (1970) Birdsong and speech development: could there be parallels? Am Sci 58:669-673
[2] Marler P, Sherman V (1983) Song structure without auditory feedback: emendations of the auditory template hypothesis. J Neurosci 3:517-531