Fairywrens Can Learn Their Mothers' Calls Before They Hatch

The Super Fairywrens are birds that manage to imitate their parent's calls even before they emerge from their eggs.

Mimicking their parents' calls can help the birds to find mates, caution their peers of predators and recognise their family. In a recent study by a team from Flinders University, Hunter College, and Cornell University, experts examined the behaviour in their relatives---the Red-backed Fairywrens.

It is interesting to note that even in the Red-backed Fairywrens, the females called to their eggs not only during incubation but also after they hatched. Hence, the birdlings emitted beeps that were just like their mothers'.

"Fairywrens have become a new model system in which to test new dimensions in the ontogeny of parent-offspring communication in vertebrates," said Mark Hauber, one of the study researchers from Hunter College in New York City.

With every call, the parents increase their efforts to feed them.

Did the fairywrens use the calls to identify foreign birdlings, such as parasitic cuckoos? The experts found  Red-backed Fairywren mothers did not enhance their calls when they found more cuckoos near them.

"Because fairywrens have high predation rates, we originally placed microphones under Superb Fairywren nests to record alarm calls against predators twenty-four seven," explained Diane Colombelli-Négrel, one of the study researchers from Australia's Flinders University. "As a result, we discovered embryonic learning in Superb Fairywrens."

"Prenatal vocal learning has rarely been described in any animal, with the exception of humans and Australian Superb Fairywrens," said University of Queensland's Dr. William Feeney, who is an expert on the interactions between cuckoos and host birds. "In this study, the authors present data suggesting that, like the Superb Fairywren, Red-backed Fairywrens also learn their begging calls from their mother. This result is exciting as it opens the door to investigating the taxonomic diversity of this ability, which could provide insights into why it evolves."

The study was recently published  in the journal The Auk: Ornithological Advances.