Bird imitates (human) life

[urbpan]

By way of birdlovers:

David Attenborough shows us how the lyrebird's song has been influenced by man-made sounds (well, that's what I took from it, naturally): http://www.devilducky.com/media/46386/

Comments

[anais2.livejournal.com]

Love that!

[cowpewter.livejournal.com]

That's absolutely incredible. I can see a bird making the clicking sounds from the camera, and even the local mockingbirds can do a car alarm, but how does it mimic the chainsaws so accurately? Oh, and my parakeet used to try to imitate the sound of the cd-rom tray on my computer closing, hehe. He was never very good at it, but you could tell it was the effect he was after.

[punkydolly.livejournal.com]

There's something poigniant about a forest bird imitating a chainsaw.

How can the female tell that this wierd collection of sounds is actually a male bird, and not all the things it is pretending to be? Have any males been so pitch perfect that the females just couldn't find them? (I'm only being a quarter silly here, the accuracy of the bird really makes me wonder)

[gemfyre.livejournal.com]

In some areas they even mimic the sounds of axe blows. I find it fascinating that these birds are pretty much passing on recorded history in their calls. Axes haven't been used for logging for many years and the sound must have been passed down a few generations.

[ndozo.livejournal.com]

This seems like it would be a good plot device in a spy movie or something. These birds could probably out-talk a parrot.

[broken-angel.livejournal.com]

My jaw dropped at the camera shutter but I almost thought it was a joke when I heard the chainsaw. That's incredible.

[dragonwrites.livejournal.com]

amazing. he blows the wings off the loud-mouth mockingbird in my backyard. mockingbird does the variable car alarm (the one with 4 different alarms strung together) and a police siren, but, unlike this lyre bird, you can tell that it's a bird's imitation rather than mechanical cacophony.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_bazilisk_/]

Wow! That was awesome! At first I wondered if the man-made sounds were 'gags' or pranks, that's really startling, thanks much for posting that...