Scientists have always known that the animals have their special sounds or calls while signalling danger or calling to mate. But, they hadn’t got any clue that the birds even have it in them to string together sounds for deriving meaning out of it.

Japanese Tits are the social birds living in Japan and Russian Far East known for their impressive vocalizations. It turns out that they can figure out the crux of the sentences by using the rules of grammar like humans do. Japanese Tits are reported to chirp in the right order in response to the calls they haven’t even ever heard before!

The researchers of the Current Biology, reportedly said that the birds show recognition of the meaning of the sentences like humans. Understanding why the syntax has managed to evolve in Tits can help the scientists in finding out the evolution of syntax in humans.

THE ARTIFICIAL SONG SEQUENCE

On proper inspection, it was found that whenever some predator bird threatens to harm the flock of birds, they tend to produce the sound with the sequence of ABC-D, also deemed as the mobbing calls.

It was also observed that the part D of the mobbing call is similar to their recruitment call where their close relative (like an old willow) calls the entire flock members to share something like food. Whenever both of the parts are produced in combination, the flock of Japanese Tits come together and attack the intruder.

In order to find out the main reason behind the call sequence, researchers formed a never-heard-before song for the Japanese Tits and played it on with a loudspeaker in front of the flock of the Tits.

The song was made up of an artificially created sequence of the ABC alert of the Japanese Tits followed by the taa call of the recruitment of the willow.

THE RESULT OF THE ARTIFICIAL CALL

As soon as the ABC-taa call was heard by the Japanese Tits, they started searching for the predator while coming close to the loudspeaker. On reversing the artificial sequence (taa-ABC), there was no reaction from the Japanese Tits.

Their response to the artificial call help in establishing the fact that their ABC-D code isn’t a unique message- they tend to perceive it as a message which asks them to be alert and attack. They only tend to understand the meaning when the artificial sequence is in the correct order which indicates that they have the word order sense like humans.