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Research: Birds change tunes with environment

bird 557People using different dialects in different regions is heard of, but, have you ever heard of same kind of birds voicing differently as per the habitat?

A new research carried out in China on a bird called lingque zuibi indicates that birds of a feather may have different voices depending on where they live.

Yu Lijiang, professor at the Institute of Zoology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, conducted research in the forested areas of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province, China, by recording the songs of this rare bird.

Her latest research on recordings of this variety of bird showed that the song from such birds living in the downtown areas are more high-pitched and sharper, while suburban birds sing a deeper, more mellow tune.

Her further in-depth research of five different cities in China showed that the birds in the five cities did seem to have developed dialects of their own. The researcher attributed the difference to the environment. The countryside area is more spacious and less noisy, so birds need not send out high-pitched and loud sounds to communicate.

It is indeed sad that we are influencing the environment to the extent that birds, a lovely gift of the nature, are forced to change their voices to meet their requirements.
Via : China Daily

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