The songbird has finally put to rest the ancient debate between nature versus nurture. Answer: it’s both. Sarah M.N. Woolley is a behavioral neuroscientist that has been studying the way songbirds learn. A baby zebra finch, if growing up in isolation, doesn’t have the opportunity to learn the “complex sexy song” which is passed down from adult male to young male. The song an isolated zebra finch sings is similar but doesn’t attract a mate if she has the option of a male whose song has the learned complexity.
Furthermore, if you put a baby zebra finch in the nest of a … different kind whose name I can’t remember, the song that the zebra finch will sing is a hybrid between its natural mating song and that of the other finch species. They played the audio clips on NPR and it was interesting to see the mix of natural brain hardwiring and the effect of the different upbringing. Naturally this has implications for the linguistic functions of the brain in humans as well.
This is a zebra finch:
2 responses so far ↓
1 Luke // Jul 21, 2007 at 1:34 pm
How fascinating!
I think it’s “tabula rasa,” though.
2 Bill // Jul 21, 2007 at 9:06 pm
Great, thanks for the clip, I missed it on the air. Interesting how the comment from Luke echoes some of your statements in ‘economics of the bible’ about how people will choose to focus on their preferred ‘theology’ or interpretation of the facts even in the face of conflicting evidence.
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