Who does not remember with emotion Monserrat Caballé and Freddie Mercury singing together the anthem of the Barcelona Olympics? A research team at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, led by biologist Eric Fortune, has shown that not only are human beings capable of interpenetrating to sing a chorus as a duet. The discovery of some small birds that inhabit the bamboo forests of Ecuador, and whose songs become so synchronized that sometimes they seem to come from a single individual, has made scientists rethink the systems of social communication between birds.
The team of researchers has carried out different experiments that consisted of analyzing the songs of these peculiar birds and studying the neural response when they listened to recordings of their own melodies. The results are surprising: in the first place, the singing of the males is more variable and they make more mistakes than the females, who seem to be, literally, those who have “the upper hand” in the claim. According to Fortune, this could be a sexual selection mechanism through which females test the abilities of males.
On the other hand, and contrary to expectations, the greatest neuronal response was observed when couples sang together and not individually. This assumes that birds are, in a certain way, aware that they are carrying out a joint activity, and in the same way that human beings, they put a greater effort in carrying out teamwork than when they act separately.
The discovery of this peculiar musical dialogue between couples opens new questions in the study of the social behavior of birds, which will force researchers to rethink the communication mechanisms that underlie their songs and claims.
