Latest news with #mimicry
The Verge
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
Did... did a guy just save a picture of a bird to a bird's brain?
Posted Jul 28, 2025 at 8:07 PM UTC Did... did a guy just save a picture of a bird to a bird's brain? YouTube acoustic explorer Benn Jordan appears to have gotten a starling — a bird arguably better at mimicry than a parrot — to do that! He turns a drawing into sound, the bird repeats the sound, and a similar drawing shows up on the computer. 'I saved a PNG image to a bird,' his video claims. The result isn't surprising because of course these birds can repeat sounds — but how often do we think of sound as encoded visual data? Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Sean Hollister Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Sean Hollister Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All News
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Toddler picks up mom's nickname for dad… and won't stop using it
It starts like this: Babe. Babe! BABE! The kind of audio that any mom in a long-term relationship is probably immune to at this point. But when a toddler joins in? Suddenly, your nickname is now a family-wide broadcast, and your 2-year-old is out here calling your husband 'babe' with the same tone and urgency you do when you're asking him a question for the third time. That's exactly what happened in a viral TikTok posted by Analiese Maldonado (@thisbeachylife_), which has now been viewed over 23.6 million times. The video shows Maldonado's toddler hollering 'Babe!' while looking for his dad, Roberto Maldonado. The comments section exploded with parents flooding in with their own mimicry stories: @Los Google: So they hear & understand everything except the 'put that down' sentence. @Steven Perez: My 15-month-old calls me 'Steve' Carissa Rae Boy Mom: My friend's kid called her 'ebay' and we couldn't figure it out until the dad said 'hey babe' and she repeated 'ebay' This isn't just toddler chaos, it's a masterclass in how kids absorb everything. The language we use becomes their internal script. Pet names, sarcastic banter, sweet nothings muttered under our breath? They're taking notes. Related: Mom and dad talk behind their toddler's back—her reaction is unforgettable Why toddlers do this (and why it matters more than we think) According to experts, toddlers mimicking speech isn't just adorable—it's a major milestone in language development. Around 18 months to 3 years old, children enter what's called the 'imitative stage' of speech, where they start copying the tone, words, and rhythm of the people closest to them. In other words: if you say it, they will say it back. And while we often talk about modeling behavior when it comes to eating vegetables or managing big feelings, this moment is also about modeling communication in relationships. Pet names like 'babe,' 'love,' or even your household's uniquely chaotic catchphrases? They teach kids how we relate to each other—how we show affection, resolve conflict, and create connection through language. Even the 'funny' mimicry is actually their way of trying to understand roles and relationships. In fact, research shows the first 3 years of life, when the brain is developing and maturing, is the most intensive period for acquiring speech and language skills. Toddlers really are watching This video joins a long list of moments where toddlers reveal how closely they're watching us and how their interpretation of family dynamics can be both sweet and hilariously off-base. Whether it's 'babe,' 'boo,' 'honey,' or 'bruh' (yes, someone's toddler said that too), it's all a reminder that our kids are listening. Closely. And they're stitching together their worldview—one mimicked word at a time. So the next time your toddler calls your partner 'babe,' just remember: they're not just echoing you. They're learning how to love, connect, and speak their own little version of your family's language. Related: Toddler gives viral crumpet order—and mom's calm response wins the internet Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Flies disguised as wasps can't fool birds
Despite their bee-like appearance, hoverflies are all buzz, no bite. The harmless insects, more closely related to midges than wasps, imitate their distant stinging cousins with stripes, high contrast colors, and narrow waists. In theory, the 'flies in wasps' clothing' use this strategy to ward off would-be predators, without having to pay the cost of evolving venom and an appendage to inject it. But in practice, it's an open question how well the tactic works. The quality of hoverfly mimicry can vary– from detailed disguises to the insect equivalent of slapping on a pair of cat ears for a Halloween party. Evolutionary biologists have long questioned why it is that some hoverflies bother with such inaccurate impersonations, and why poor mimicry persists in populations. New research offers a possible explanation. Even questionable copycats can trip up certain predators like spiders and praying mantises, according to a study published July 2 in the journal Nature. In contrast, other predators are tougher to trick. Using unconventional methods, the researchers showed just how good birds are at distinguishing wasp mimics from the real sting, and what particular traits make the difference. The team created intricate, 3D printed models of hypothetical insect chimeras to explore the whole range from 100 percent wasp to fully fly. Across four experiments with wild birds, domestic chicks, and invertebrates, they observed how different potential predators responded to a variety of artificial mimics. It's 'a novel way to ask questions that have been discussed in the literature a lot, but not very rigorously tested,' Tom Sherratt, an evolutionary ecologist at Carleton University in Ottawa, tells Popular Science. Sherratt wasn't involved in the study, but co-wrote an accompanying News & Views piece about the research. 'I thought it was a really nice paper,' he says, 'they had a great idea for these 3D printed insects.' Most prior research of mimicry uses real insect specimens or crude stimuli, like colored squares, to examine predator response. But those approaches come with limitations. Either the cue is rudimentary and it's difficult to evaluate outcomes, or 'you're restricted to only what's in nature,' Christopher Taylor, lead study author and an evolutionary biologist at the University of Nottingham in England, tells Popular Science. In contrast, 3D printing opened up an entire world of possibilities. Taylor and his colleagues were able to finely tune each of the models used across their experiments with the desired mix of features, and better assess the importance of some changes over others. They found that great tits (Parus major), a common species of European songbird, have a hyper discerning eye. After a short period of training, the wild birds were able to pick out most of the fake wasps. They could also readily discern between the 'jack of all trade' mimics that mix traits from different targets and models of actual, stinging insects. Taylor and his many co-authors further found that color and size were the most critical aspects of successful mimics, over shape and pattern, in trials with recently hatched domestic chickens. Finally, they discovered that crab spiders and praying mantises are much more easily put off by inaccurate wasp mimics than birds, offering an explanation for why evolution has guided some flies to invest in half measures. 'In some situations, but not all, [poor mimics] persist because they can get away with it. They don't need to be super accurate in all respects in order to fool a predator–with the caveat that it depends on what their main predators are,' explains Taylor. In other words: If your main threats are other insects or spiders, appearing unappetizing and potentially dangerous is a lower lift. If you're particularly tasty to birds, you'll probably have to try harder. [ Related: Scientists discover how some flowers mimic the smell of death. ] To reach that conclusion, the scientists began by conducting 3D scans of real wasps and flies, and then using those digitized insects to construct fake ones. They printed plastic versions of the real insects, fly/wasp hybrid variants ranging from 25 to 75 percent similarity, hybrids between two different species of real wasps, and versions of the wasp/fly chimeras where color, size, shape, or pattern were the focus of the hypothetical mimicry. In their first experiment, the scientists presented wild great tits with puzzle grids made up of small lidded dishes. On top of each was one of their 3D insect models. Beneath the fly or fly hybrids, the researchers placed a tasty mealworm. Nothing was placed in the wasp containers.. Over weeks of observation, they recorded what order the birds approached containers in. After a short period of teaching the tits that flies advertised a treat while wasps advertised wasted time, the birds readily separated even convincing fly mimics from wasps. The birds significantly favored the fly and fly hybrid boxes over the wasp boxes, according to the findings. The team also verified that what the birds learned from the figurines would apply to the real thing by running a trial where some of the plastic critters were swapped with pinned, dead insects. They found that the birds associated the real flies with food and the real wasps with less likelihood of reward. In another experiment, they conducted similar trials, but with 3D models of two different species of wasp and hybrids spanning the gap between both. They found that the birds were easily able to tell the difference between the insect models, and readily learned that the plastic replicas of the true wasps had no food to offer, while the hybrid 'mimics' were worth foraging for. Then, Taylor and co presented baby chickens with different versions of hypothetical wasp mimics, to tease out which traits were the most important for keeping predators at bay. After food reward training, they timed how long it took for the chicks' to attack or examine the insect models. When the insect models were yellow and black or accurately sized to match a common wasp, the birds delayed pecking for longer. Wasp-like patterns and shapes, on the other hand, were less of a deterrent. In their invertebrate trials, the team placed jumping spiders, crab spiders, and praying mantises in an arena with a series of 3D printed insects, one at a time, spanning from full fly to true wasp. In the presence of the plastic wasps, the researchers administered a 'punishment' to most of the test subjects by prodding them in the abdomen. With and without training, the mantises and crab spiders showed a significantly different response to the flies than to the wasps, and were much more cautious of lesser intermediate mimics than the birds had been. Jumping spiders, which have better vision than many other invertebrates, were better able to tell hybrids and true wasps apart. On their own, each of these experiments 'would be good papers,' says Sherratt. 'But the fact that we've got all of them under one roof is what I think really helps make this paper quite interesting and imaginative.' [ Related: This spider pretends to be an ant, but not well enough to avoid being eaten. ] Though imaginative, 3D printing does come with limitations. For one, the plastic insect figurines are purely visual cues. They can't replicate the behavior, sound, or chemical aspects of an actual, living hoverfly or wasp, notes Taylor. It's quite possible these less printable features might be part of how predators pick their meals and learn to avoid unpleasant experiences. Then, there's the fact that the birds in the study were trained and tested on a reward/no reward basis. In nature, the risk of picking on a wasp isn't just that you might miss a meal, it's also that you could be hurt, says Sherratt. Under those higher stakes conditions, birds in reality might be less willing to approach wasp mimics than they were in the experiments. Still, the study is an 'ambitious' foray into a new frontier of biology research, Sherratt says. He imagines scientists using similar methods to explore sexual selection and other forms of mimicry. Taylor hopes their approach for exploring imagined adaptations allows for clearer answers about why and when species settle into a long-term form. 'It feeds into this larger question about evolution,' he says. 'You see a broad range of adaptations in nature, but how well-adapted does a particular species need to be before it kind of reaches the peak?'.
The Guardian
03-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Country diary: Redstarts are a master of the cover version
It was at this Plantlife reserve five years ago that I first realised how common redstarts, among our most beautiful summer migrants, are also astonishing vocal mimics. Understanding of the subject has been patchy, which is strange, given that as long ago as 1845 William Yarrell noted how males closely imitate the notes of the sparrow and chaffinch, and the songs of the garden warbler and lesser whitethroat. I can confirm three of those species. He reported that a Mr Sweet had trained his captive redstart to reproduce the Copenhagen Waltz! One reason why we've largely ignored the redstart's gift for imitation is because the song phrases are so short. They last just two or three seconds and are delivered at an average of 6.5 a minute. Yet any lack of sustained musicality is more than compensated for by the vocalist's persistence. One male here sang continuously above my head for 100 minutes, delivering 650 phrases. In a whole day it must produce thousands of song units, and across a full spring possibly hundreds of thousands. Almost all contain snippets of other birds' tunes. Perhaps the most moving during my spring of research – in which I've listed 52 mimicked species – is the corroboration of a 2021 encounter, when I heard a Derbyshire redstart do a rendition of European bee-eater calls. This year, I've heard it several times, and it's never less than shiver-inducing. Let's zoom into outer space now to look down on Deep Dale to grasp its full significance. There is first the neural, vocal achievement of the original author, the bee-eater, which masters and shares this note across its entire population – a beautifully soft, remarkably far-carrying burred sound. Then there is the redstart, which brings all that bee-eater neural processing from the Mediterranean or Africa, and reproduces it precisely as part of its own Derbyshire songscape. And who knows for how long redstarts have been enriching the collective mind of Deep Dale with this vocal traffic? Perhaps thousands of years. If ochre and charcoal animals drawn by humans on cave walls 30,000 years ago are art, then this consummate mimesis by a redstart is surely no less an achievement nor less artful. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Do parrots actually understand what they're saying?
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In the wild, parrots squeak, squawk, whistle and trill to communicate with their flockmates. These highly social birds rely on their complex communication systems to get food and warn of potential dangers, and research even suggests parrots use "signature contact calls" to refer to each other, similar to how humans call each other by name. But when parrots live with people, they don't have any flockmates to learn "parrot" from. Instead, they use their highly specialized brains to pick up on human speech. So when parrots talk, do they really understand what they're saying, or are they just masters of mimicry? The answer depends on the individual parrot and how it's trained — though research points toward parrots having a surprising ability to understand human speech and use words and phrases appropriately. "Birds that are trained appropriately can learn amazing amounts of speech," Irene Pepperberg, a research professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, told Live Science. Pepperberg has spent her career training parrots to use human language. Her most famous study participant, Alex the African gray parrot, was known for his prolific communication skills. Alex understood more than 100 words for different objects, actions and colors. He could count up to six and had a basic understanding of the concept of zero. When given an object, Alex could identify its color, shape and material, as well as accurately compare multiple objects using terms like "bigger" or "smaller" and "same" or "different." Alex was trained using a careful methodology that ensured he understood that specific words applied to certain objects or concepts. But experts say that even everyday pet parrots can pick up on certain features of human language. Related: Why do parrots live so long? Erin Colbert-White, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Puget Sound, said parrots can definitely learn words that refer to real-world objects. "If you say 'peanut' enough times and you hand them a peanut, just like with a kid, they're going to learn that word label," Colbert-White said. To test whether parrots really understand that the word "peanut" refers to a peanut — and not that they just want to be fed any type of food — Colbert-White said you can wait until the bird requests a peanut and then hand them a different food. If the parrot knows exactly what "peanut" means, there's a good chance they'll drop the unrequested food and ask for a peanut again. Colbert-White said this type of learning applies more to concrete, real-world objects than to abstract words or phrases. However, parrots can pick up on contextual cues related to more abstract words. "Sometimes they'll use these words or phrases in appropriate ways, because they're smart," Pepperberg said. For example, a parrot might learn that people say "hello" when they walk into a room and then start saying "hello" to greet people. They may not understand the deeper conceptual meaning of the word, but their owner will probably find the behavior entertaining and reward it by giving them more attention. Parrots form strong bonds with their owners and are very responsive to their feedback, so this creates a cycle of reinforcement where the parrot learns to use words in the correct context. In another example, Pepperberg describes Alex learning how to say "I'm sorry." African gray parrots are notoriously mischievous, and Alex would often break or chew objects around the lab. When he shredded an important stack of papers, Pepperberg wrote in her book "Alex & Me" (Harper, 2008), she became upset and started yelling at him. Alex responded with the words "I'm sorry," a phrase Pepperberg believes he picked up from her. Shortly before the paper shredding incident, Pepperberg had caught Alex with a broken coffee mug. She was angry at first and reprimanded him, but quickly realized Alex could have been hurt, and told him "I'm sorry" while making sure he was okay. After that, Alex continued to say "I'm sorry" after getting into trouble and whenever Pepperberg threatened him with a time out. "He made the connection between the phrase and defusing a fraught situation," Pepperberg said in an email. "There was no contrition (I know a lot of people like that!), but he knew the appropriate context." The same goes for a phrase like "I love you." To a parrot, "what 'I love you' means isn't this abstract concept of love," Colbert-White said, "but rather, 'I have learned that when I say this, I get showered with attention; I get physical affection; I get to connect with my pair-bonded individual.' "I don't know that there's anything particularly fascinating about the fact that they don't understand it, because there are people that say it and don't understand it," she added. "You know, it just serves a function." RELATED MYSTERIES —Why do pigeons bob their heads? —Why do hummingbirds 'hum'? —Why don't all birds fly? Ultimately, each parrot has its own unique capacity to understand human speech. Some parrots never talk at all, especially if they have a fellow parrot to chirp with, Colbert-White said. On that note, Pepperberg thinks it's time that people give parrots more credit for their innate communication abilities — of which researchers are only scratching the surface — rather than just making them learn our languages. "We treat animals as less intelligent than we are in general, but we expect them to learn our systems," Pepperberg said. "We've spent the last 50-plus years trying to crack their systems, without much success."
