Zebra finches are able to remember up to 42 birds based on their vocalizations

A trio of researchers from the University of California found that zebra finches can remember up to 42 bird voices based on their vocalizations alone. In their article published in the journal Advances in science, K. Yu, WE Wood, and FE Theunissen describe the experiments conducted with captive zebra finches and what they learned about their memory skills.

Previous research has shown that humans have so-called “quick mapping,” which is the ability to recognize an association between things after very little exposure, recognizing someone’s voice after a single conversation, for example. Previous research has suggested that rapid mapping may be uniquely human. In this new effort, researchers in California have conducted experiments with zebra finches that challenge this notion.

The experiments involved first training test finches on small call datasets and then expanding them to test the bird’s limits. To this end, the first day of training involved playing a distant call or song for a given bird: the vocalizations were analyzed, with one streak leading to a food reward and another not. The result was a test that allowed a bird to prove whether or not it recognized a bird making a certain call. Over time, the number of bird calls has increased. If the bird recognized a pre-recorded call, it may let it go, leading to a food reward. If they didn’t recognize a call, they could press a button to move to the next call. Through training, the researchers found that the finches were able to remember and recognize an average of 42 birds by vocalizations alone.

In all, the researchers trained and tested 19 finches and found that all of them were able to distinguish birds by their calls and remember large numbers of them. The researchers noted that the birds learned to recognize other birds from their calls very quickly – it only took a few exposures. They also found that the birds retained their memories of the other birds over time – a month later, they were still all able to recognize the birds by the calls they had been trained to recognize. The researchers suggest that their experiments indicate that zebra finches have rapid mapping capabilities.

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