Petra 6A
Saturday November 5th
The Plain-Tailed Wren
The plain tailed wren is known for an amazing skill. When the female and male are put together, they sing a duet that sounds like one bird! The plain tailed wren is about the size of a starling, and it is brown in colour with a stripe that goes over the eyes. They live in thick bamboo forests on the sides of the Andes Mountains. They alternate singing with such speed and precision that their song sounds like one. What is also interesting is that the birds sing alone as well. When the female sings alone, there are gaps where the male should be, and vice versa. Scientists found that the duet singing is used mostly for the female to test the male’s ability to sing his syllables in the short span of time she gives him, or to test whether the male is good enough for her or not. Dr. Eric Fortune, of the Department of Physiological and Brain Sciences at the Johns Hopkins U. in Baltimore, conducted brain tests on these amazing animals. He thought that the strongest memory would be of the cues to tell the bird when to sing, but it was actually the whole duet. Instead of knowing just their part and when to sing it, they knew their partner’s part as well to help them sing theirs. Dr. Fortune also found that you could put a male and a female who were 1 kilometer apart together, and they would learn the duet in only a couple of hours.
My thoughts
I think that it is amazing to learn about this incredible creature, and that discovering more and more things about our planet-mates could really help us in understanding our world and how to protect it. Also, it’s just really cool to learn about this stuff.
Why do you find it amazing to learn about this bird? What were you thinking while reading this article?
ReplyDelete