Along these lines, I have noticed that Mockingbirds in different parts of the
country appear
to mimic different species, found in those different parts of the country
(Louisiana vs.
Arizona for example). I have never read anything published on this. It seems
unlikely that
each individual bird learned the details of each song from hearing each of
those different
species throughout its lifetime. Indeed, the mimic of species appeared in
areas where that
song was seldom heard, but "around." The songs appear to be "cultural" to that
extent.
Does this support the niche hypothesis?
--- In Bernie Krause <> wrote:
>
> See http://www.wildsanctuary.com/niche.pdf ("The Niche Hypothesis:
> How Animals Taught us to Dance and Sing") first published in 1987.
>
> The idea of bird dialects was studied and published for years before
> the ones below came to light, mostly through the work of the late
> Luis Baptista, Director of the Dept of Birds & Mammals at the
> California Academy of Sciences, the department with which I was
> affiliated during and immediately after my doctoral work in the late
> 70s/early 80s. Baptista's main subject was the White-crowned Sparrow
> (Zonotrichia leucophrys). He trained many sets of young birds to
> learn songs of other species as well as to alter the dialects of
> other White-crowns whose offspring they were.
>
> Although he never got around to publishing his findings, he was
> coming to the realization, just before his untimely death a few years
> ago, that one of the contributing factors of the syntax may well have
> been the Soundscape Niche Effect, or the complex ways in which the
> soundscape of each White-crown flock affected their ability to learn
> their songs so that they would be effective within the acoustic turf
> they had chosen to live. The special combination of the biophony,
> geophony, and anthrophony, in each White-crowned environment, had,
> after all, a likely and unique effect on how the song syntax
> developed.
>
> The idea that humans learned to dance, sing and drum from the
> biophonies and geophonies of the natural world had also been around
> for a while before I got to it (See Chapter 12 of the late Paul
> Shepard's "The Others: How Animals Made us Human"), although not
> fully developed into a thesis. Shepard's work is supported by the
> parallel anthropological efforts of Louis Sarno, who has lived and
> worked with the Ba'Aka Pygmies in a remote forest of the Central
> African Republic, and Steven Feld, who worked closely with the Kaluli
> of Papua New Guinea and who is now recording and studying a different
> angle in Ghana. And, of course, the idea had been around for eons
> before academics in the West wrapped their territorial minds around
> the concept and gave it credence. It was, after all, practiced by
> those human groups living much more closely connected to the natural
> world.
>
> Bernie Krause
>
> >Interested in your thoughts about this one -
> >http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?
issueID=114&articleID=1452&utm_source=NationalWildlifeMagazine&utm_medium=E-
newsletter&utm_term=april%2Fmay2007&utm_content=SingingintheBrain&utm_campaign
=1
> >or http://tinyurl.com/34faeu
> >
> >----------------------
> >Suzanne
> >http://web.tampabay.rr.com/swilli41/www
> >Florida, USA
> >
> >"There is no use of worrying about shells, for you can't keep them
> >from busting in your trench, nor you can't stop the rain...what is the
> >use of worrying if you can't alter things?" - Alvin C. York, Medal of
> >Honor Recipient, July 1, 1918
> >
> >
> >
> >"Microphones are not ears,
> >Loudspeakers are not birds,
> >A listening room is not nature."
> >Klas Strandberg
> >Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Wild Sanctuary
> P. O. Box 536
> Glen Ellen, CA 95442
> t. 707-996-6677
> f. 707-996-0280
> http://www.wildsanctuary.com
>
>
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