We discuss recent findings suggesting that non-human animals lack memory for stimulus
sequences, and therefore do not represent the order of stimuli faithfully. These observations …

Biomedical research focusing on physiological, morphological, behavioral, and other
aspects of development has long depended upon the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) as …

Male songbirds sing to establish territories and to attract mates. 1, 2 However, increasing
reports of singing in non-reproductive contexts 3 and by females 4, 5 show that song use is …

Songbirds acquire songs by imitation, as humans do speech. Although imitation should
drive convergence within a group and divergence through drift between groups, zebra finch …

In this chapter, we present seven hypotheses about human and animal intelligence that we
explore in the book. Hypothesis 1: Humans and animals embody two different paths to …

Studies of acoustic communication often focus on the categories and units of vocalizations,
but subtle variation also occurs in how these signals are uttered. In human speech, it is not …

Songbird syntax is generally thought to be simple, in particular lacking long-distance
dependencies in which one element affects choice of another occurring considerably later in …

Zebra finches rely mainly on syllable phonology rather than on syllable sequence when they
discriminate between two songs. However, they can also learn to discriminate two strings …

Many species are able to vocally recognize individual conspecifics and this capacity seems
widespread in oscine songbirds. The exact acoustic features used for such recognition are …

Language has been considered by many to be uniquely human. Numerous theories for how
it evolved have been proposed but rarely tested. The articles in this theme issue consider …