Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the AAAS, Zebra Finches are helping their hatchlings respond to global warming, by singing to their eggs.
Video: Zebra finch call prepares their eggs for climate change
Scientists have long worried whether animals can respond to the planet’s changing climate. Now, a new study reports that at least one species of songbird—and likely many more—already knows how to prep its chicks for a warming world. They do so by emitting special calls to the embryos inside their eggs, which can hear and learn external sounds. This is the first time scientists have found animals using sound to affect the growth, development, behavior, and reproductive success of their offspring, and adds to a growing body of research revealing that birds can “doctor” their eggs.
“The study is novel, surprising, and fascinating, and is sure to lead to much more work on parent-embryo communication,” says Robert Magrath, a behavioral ecologist at the Australian National University in Canberra who was not involved in the study.
The idea that the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) parents were “talking to their eggs” occurred to Mylene Mariette, a behavioral ecologist at Deakin University in Waurn Ponds, Australia, while recording the birds’ sounds at an outdoor aviary. She noticed that sometimes when a parent was alone, it would make a rapid, high-pitched series of calls while sitting on the eggs. Mariette and her co-author, Katherine Buchanan, recorded the incubation calls of 61 female and 61 male finches inside the aviary. They found that parents of both sexes uttered these calls only during the end of the incubation period and when the maximum daily temperature rose above 26°C (78.8°F).
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Read more: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/video-zebra-finch-call-prepares-their-eggs-climate-change
The following is the study referenced by the press release;
Prenatal acoustic communication programs offspring for high posthatching temperatures in a songbird
In many species, embryos can perceive and learn external sounds. Yet, the possibility that parents may use these embryonic capacities to alter their offspring’s developmental trajectories has not been considered. Here, we demonstrate that zebra finch parents acoustically signal high ambient temperatures (above 26°C) to their embryos. We show that exposure of embryos to these acoustic cues alone adaptively alters subsequent nestling begging and growth in response to nest temperature and influences individuals’ reproductive success and thermal preferences as adults. These findings have implications for our understanding of maternal effects, phenotypic plasticity, developmental programming, and the adaptation of endothermic species to a warming world.
Read more (Paywalled): http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6301/812
Bird calls influencing the growth and behaviour of hatchlings is a fascinating discovery, if the result is repeatable.
In this case I don’t think the phrase “Bird-brain” applies to the Zebra Finches.
Perhaps that is true of Hummingbirds also. We have a feeder outside the kitchen window and when it is empty or one of the others in the yard is empty, they watch for us to be at the sink and hover at the glass to get our attention, even when only the ant mote is out of water (they drink the water). I should catch it with my phone video.
I waited until I was fully awake with both coffee and a soda in me, am now eating early lunch and STILL I don’t understand how the author of that article wasn’t stabbed in the throat for wasting money.
“” The idea that the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata) parents were “talking to their eggs” occurred to Mylene Mariette, a behavioral ecologist at Deakin University in Waurn Ponds, Australia, while recording the birds’ sounds at an outdoor aviary…
…Mariette and her co-author, Katherine Buchanan, recorded the incubation calls of 61 female and 61 male finches inside the aviary.””
I thought California had first dibs on all the fruits and nuts, especially those in the pseudo sciences. How did they miss out on those two.
The Aussies made a better offer?
This is a half-step shy of the Lamarckian doctrine of ‘soft inheritance’.
Sometime, in the foreseeable future, a LOT of ‘scientific’ journals and societies are going to have to explain a lot of their publications and apologize for the bad science they have published.
Actually, it turns out lamarkian ‘evolution’ (really phenotype adaptation) also takes place, via epigenetics. Worth reading about. Is fairly new molecular biology, but now quite well established including underlyting mechanisms like methylation in expression regulation regions (formerly thought to be ‘junk’ DNA) and DNA differential coiling. Coral budding adaptation (as opposed to spawning, the Darwin evolution mechanism) is one example response to delta water temperature and salinity. This on top of symbiont exchange via transitory coral bleaching, also something not well understood until recently.
The researchers say nothing about climate change they merely say the adult birds sing a different song depending on temperature, thats it. Stop writing ninsense
Quote….”Scientists have long worried whether animals can respond to the planet’s changing climate.”..That is the very first line..Who is talking “nonsense” ?? Changing climate = “Climate Change”..
Of course your criticism is directed at sources such as sciencemag.org and other GW proxies that are reporting exactly that.
LOL, when I tried to inform someone I know that there is no real CO2 emergency, he responded “You don’t read National Geographic, do you?” I said “No, I read the papers the articles in NG are based on, whenever I can. But I also read many more.” He still tuned me out, but it was a great counter-jab that made him all the more furious that I didn’t “believe” so his counter was “You can believe what you want I guess”.
I didn’t think that anthropomorphizing animal behavior was worthy of publication. It boggles the mind to think that a paper like this actually made it through pal, er, peer review.
Taken at face value, it is good news and further proof that Nature can handle anything man can throw at it. On second thought, pfffft.
Finch live about 5 years, not long enough for them to gather any reliable trend data, so i doubt they would know the difference between warming and cooling outside of seasonal variability. Furthermore, if they were somehow aware that the earth was about to boil why waste their time bring up kids? Surely there would be a party to go to…
That’s what the chirping is: finches passing the data on so that their great-great-grandchicks will have a usable baseline for climate studies!
Where’s my grant?
Expectant human mothers should take heed of this, and begin “preparing” their fetus for “climate change”, by playing recordings of Al Gore. Ya gotta start ’em young.
The Zebra Finches can’t, on their own, be sensing or commenting on CAGW, because CAGW and/or unprecedented warming, is not happening, so the Zebra Finches must have been exposed to the Climate Change Gurus’s propaganda, at some point in time. Someone must have shown the Zebra Finches a Hockey Stick chart, and caused them to panic and start spouting Alarmist gibberish to their eggs.
Someone ought to tell those birds about the windmill blades. They could pass that along to their offspring, too.
So… Alarmists who can’t seem to stop twittering about Climate Change are actually trying to change the growth development of any embryos nearby them? Who knew?
I wonder is the mother’s are OK with that?
More “bird talk”…..note Audubon stand
https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/most-environmental-groups-oppose-washington-states-carbon-tax-initiative
If the birds do it, then so are the bees. All life, in fact, must be yakking about climate. If only we had a Dr. Dolittle to tell us what they are all actually saying.
When my wife was pregnant our as yet unborn son used to kick quite a lot. We used to calm him down by placing a loudspeaker on her abdomen and playing him classical music. He plays the French Horn now.
Payback’s a beach.
I think that the Zebra Finch (Taeniopygia guttata) are probably better as parents than,Mylene Mariette is a as a behavioral ecologist at Deakin University in Waurn Ponds near Geelong in Victoria, to judge by this effort. The Zebra Finch has a very long history of success as a parent to show us……Deakin University, not so much.
They’re just giving the kids a weather report so they will know whether to put on the long johns before coming out to play.
What? Are there no denier finches? No sceptics among these birdbrains?
Zebra finches, like most australian birds are opportunistic breeders, i e they breed more or less continuously when conditions are good (=wet) and stop breeding when times are bad (=dry).
I should guess that their signaling to the eggs are more likely to be related to this than to temperature per se. I. e. “times are good kids, get ready to grow fast and start breeding soon” or “times are tough, no hurry, don’t waste good food”.
Nope! Not even close!
behind the paywall
https://www.sendspace.com/file/vi4rd9
so then crickets must serenade their eggs, too, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolbear%27s_law
degreesF = 50 + (([chirps.in.one.minute]-40) / 4)
This formula is accurate to within a degree or so when applied to the chirping of the field cricket.
Zebra finches, is’nt that the canary in the coal mine?
It only happened above 26C, so they act like a thermometer, but have no clue of any climate change.
If i dress lighter when it is more than 26C does that mean i am aware of climate change?
As the climate is not getting warmer, I would conclude that, if these researchers are correct, the parent birds are feeding their eggs propaganda, which questions the sincerity of their parenting.
In the wild zebra finches happily live in areas where the temperature is well above 26C for months, in fact closer to 40C.
The study was done in an aviary !
Perhaps what the finches were saying was something like……”Wow, it’s 26 degrees, not cold anymore. Wish we were well out of here and back in the bush”.
Brilliant trolling Eric. Masterful.