The Surprising Memory of Birds
Their skills in imitating sound are directly related to birds’ abil-
ity to recall sounds they have heard. According to the research team
at the Free University in Berlin, when conducting research into how
a bird imitates sound, the following points should be addressed:
Vocal imitation which is so common in human beings is quite
rare in nonhuman organisms. Until now, it has been docu-
mented only for a few families of birds (e. g. oscine birds and
parrots) and some mammals (e. g. marine mammals and bats).
As an inquiry into this accomplishment we study the proper-
ties of memory mechanisms that allow individuals to first ac-
quire, then memorize and finally vocally imitate a set of audi-
torily experienced signal patterns. Our biological model is the
Common Nightingale (
Luscinia megarhynchos
). Males of this
species are able to auditorily learn and accu-
rately reproduce more than 200 different
types of songs. Thus, a central aim of
our study is to uncover how these
birds successfully cope with complex
learning tasks, and how they effec-
tively retrieve their memory-stored
data later in life…
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Birds’ have memories of surprisingly
high capacity. Not only do they recall the
exact location of where they spend their
summers and winters, but also the
precise location of various food-
stuffs they have stored for use in
the winter and of plants whose
nectar they have drunk. In fact,
some birds have longer-term
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