If songbirds could appear on "The Masked Singer" reality TV competition, zebra finches would likely steal the show. That's because they can rapidly memorize the signature sounds of at least 50 ...

Male zebra finches learn their song by imitating conspecifics. To stand out in the crowd, each male develops its own unique song. Because of this individual-specific song, it was long assumed that ...

Birds create songs by moving muscles in their vocal organs to vibrate air passing through their tissues, and new research shows that these muscles act in concert to create sound. Scientists describe ...

The first songbird to have its genome deciphered may offer new insight into how human children learn to speak. A GLOBAL TEAM OF scientists has sequenced the genome of Australia’s native zebra finch, ...

In our quest to find what makes humans unique, we often compare ourselves with our closest relatives: the great apes. But when it comes to understanding the quintessential human capacity for language, ...

Female zebra finches, normally devoted to their mates, are more likely to flirt with male strangers when background noise goes up, say researchers. A test with finches in a lab found that white noise ...

Like humans who can instantly tell which friend or relative is calling by the timbre of the person's voice, zebra finches have a near-human capacity for language mapping. If songbirds could appear on ...