What makes humans unique in this world is the fact that they are capable of speaking and communicating with each other using a language. But, is speaking using a language only limited to humans? 

Parrots are out, chestnut-crowned babblers are in. Researchers studying the said birds have found that the species in Australia are capable of stringing together sounds and combining them together to form a language with different meanings — a skill that is inherently present in man.

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A study published in the journal PLOS Biology focused on the chestnut-crowned babbler which is found in the Australian Outback.

Sabrina Engesser, a researcher from the University of Zurich, said: " Although previous studies indicate that animals, particularly birds, are capable of stringing different sounds together as part of a complex song, these songs generally lack a specific meaning and changing the arrangement of sounds within a song does not seem to alter its overall message," UPI has learned.

Engesser added: "In contrast to most songbirds, chestnut- crowned babblers do not sing, instead its extensive vocal repertoire is characterized by discrete calls made up of smaller acoustically distinct individual sounds."

Scientists studying the babbler birds found that different patterns were used by the species in making and reacting to calls that utilize two sounds, which are referred to as A and B in the study. These two letters were combined differently for a flight call ("AB") and for a feeding call ("BAB"), South China Morning Post reports.

To understand the babbler birds better, the scientists first analyzed the two songs in a particular pair, to verify that they were indeed the exact same sounds. When the researchers played the songs back to the babblers, the birds could clearly distinguish the two. Hence, they would scan for airborne birds if they heard the flight call ("AB") and look to the nest when they heard the feeding call ("BAB").   

Then, to further ensure the results of their experiment, the researchers chopped up the A's and B's from each song and rearranged the letters into the other song. Sure enough, a feeding call that was made out of sounds from the flight call made them look to their nest, while a flight call that was built out of sounds from the feeding call made them look skyward.

The authors wrote, "To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that animals have basic capacity to use phoneme-like contrasts to derive qualitatively new meaning, a basic component of phoneme structuring."

However, the authors admitted that the study needs further experimentation to know how the babbler birds distinguish the elements of the calls. 

"More generally, further evidence for the use and manifestation of phonemic systems in animals is required, we propose that such systems will be most operant in the short-range communication of vocally constrained, social animals," the authors further added, according to Los Angeles Times.

TagsBabbler Birds, Science, Study, Language