It’s not the same old song
Canadian sparrows have changed their tune:
A new bird song is spreading like wildfire among Canadian white-throated sparrows, at a scale not seen before by scientists.
Birds rarely change their chirpy little tunes, and when they do, it’s typically limited to the local environment, where slight song variants basically become regional dialects. New research published today in Current Biology describes an extraordinary exception to this rule, in which a novel song sung by white-throated sparrows is spreading across Canada at an unprecedented rate. What’s more, the new song appears to be replacing the pre-existing melody, which dates as far back as the 1960s…
Traditionally, white-throated sparrows in western and central Canada sing a song distinguished by its three-note ending. The new song, which likely started off as a regional dialect at some point between 1960 and 2000, features a distinctive two-note ending, and it’s taking the sparrow community by storm. What makes the new ending so viral is a mystery to the study authors, led by Ken Otter from the University of Northern British Columbia.
Sparrows learn the songs from other birds, so it is possible for songs to change in this way. The whole thing is rather mysterious, because scientists don’t think the new song has any particular survival benefit. So perhaps the birds just prefer novelty after a while? This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense either, because each bird probably only sings one song per lifetime, although there may be a transitional generation that adopts the new tune because of the need for a change.
The whole thing reminds me – of course! – of a sonnet by Robert Frost:
NEVER AGAIN WOULD BIRD’S SONG BE THE SAME
He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds’ song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.
Did the social media facilitate the spread of this melody?!
“The whole thing is rather mysterious, because scientists don’t think the new song has any particular survival benefit.”
If it doesn’t fit Darwin, it doesn’t make sense? It cannot be rationalized?
There is no Beauty or Truth in Evolution, only natural selection by genotype.
Birds sing for many untold reasons, not just sexual attraction (no thanks to Sigmund!). They bring Joy to us, the featherless!
Perhaps the Evolution God is capricious?
“Western and central Canada,” eh? Must be Anglophone birds. Let’s see whether the Francophone sparrows of Quebec take up the new song.
The biased article fails to mention black, caged sparrows have sung in that style for decades. The white males are appropriating their music without crediting them, and, of course, reaping all the benefits.
So they went from three-note endings to two-note endings? Apparently bird songs are being dumbed down much the way human pop music has been. Channeling Allan Bloom here.
The new song can loosely be translated as “Wake up Humans, Death to the Cabal, No Justice, no Peace”
PS neo,, I saw the comet tonight! Needed binoculars but it was pretty clear with them.
You know, I didn’t ever think about whether birdsongs ever changed until now. I knew they were taught by parent birds (the fathers, often? Always? I seem to recall reading something about that sometime) but I never gave a moment’s attention to either their changing over time or the implications if they didn’t – the window into the past (however useless a window) that unchanged birdsong would be.
Thank you for a post that takes my mind off the human world for a bit!
One of my favorite books growing up was Michael O’Halloran by the naturalist and pretty ardent white supremacist (I’m afraid this is actually true in her case) Gene Stratton-Porter, from the very early 1900s. One of the subplots involves the education of an idle rich woman, who in her youth had been a gifted musician, into the contributions of birdsong to classical musical themes. A younger woman of her acquaintance spends a lot of time out in nature and has noticed that certain birdsongs closely resemble melodies from Verdi, for instance. The rich woman goes out to the tamarack swamps with her at dawn one day to hear this for herself. She’s moved to deep emotion by the beauty of the swamp and the miracle of the songs for the first time since her toddler daughter’s death, and the experience is central to the rebirth of her marriage.
And that’s a subplot.
Duck Dynasty is an axiomatic metric of the fitness function. However, chaos (e.g. “evolution”) has a hidden order which we infer through an anthropogenic perspective. So, a new song, disorder, missing links, and we look for patterns in the data to satisfy our curiosity. Is it the males in other species with the colorful plumage and sympathetic songs? What does she think?
There are a lot of evolutionary features in both animals and humans that have no apparent usefulness.
A prevailing theory is that these occur purely as a result of sexual selection. The prospective mate just likes it better. And, thus, that trait is conserved while the competing trait does not.
One of the mysteries of anthropology is the size of the male penis. Apparently, it is disproportionately large compared to other mammals and a much smaller penis would adequately serve the task. So, why is that? Well, in spite of protestations otherwise, human females apparently factored that into their mate selections.
I suspect that the same thing is happening in the sparrow populations. Anyone that can’t master that new song just doesn’t have game.
It is, however, still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die.
After all, the fundamental things apply, as time goes by.
“One of the mysteries of anthropology is the size of the male [human] penis.” A load of horsesh^t but that’s what we get from anthropology.
Ever seen an equine penis? A truly long schlong.
It is not all about sex and evolution, Darwin and Freud to the contrary. “No apparent usefulness” indeed. So it is all in the eyes of the beholder?
BTW, birds do not have penises; there is no penetration, only ejaculation.
Given Trudeau policies since he has been in office, perhaps the sparrows are now chirping “The Internationale.”
Does anybody know if sparrows in Quebec Province are chirping in French-Canadian?
Cicero:
I hesitate to wade into the weeds here, but might not the reference be to the size of the penis as compared to the size of the average male body of each species?
(Slinks away…)
Mitch Strand on July 20, 2020 at 1:07 am said:
It is, however, still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die.
After all, the fundamental things apply, as time goes by.
* * *
Time to sing along with Mitch — follow the bouncing ball —
“And when two lovers woo / They still say, “I love you” — that’s three notes; which word did the birds drop?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d22CiKMPpaY
How long before BLM takes down Sam (Dooley Wilson) for some perceived offense at having talented black musicians appear in a movie with white stars?
Errata from the comments:
I wonder if this guy ever got an answer?