sing
dr. dolittle | January 19, 2016New research shows that premotor neurons are activated in the brains of adolescent male zebra finches whenever a young bird hears their father (a tutor) sing. These are the same neurons that are usually activated in anticipation of movement. What is special about this, is that as the birds learned new songs or pieces of new songs, activation of these neurons declined. This effect was due to inhibitory interneurons whose firing frequency increased as the birds practiced and improved their accuracy. Activation of these inhibitory interneurons prevented any further changes to the circuitry once…
dr. dolittle | September 17, 2015A female mouse that is. You may recall a post from several years ago when we talked about how rats seem to "laugh" when tickled. Back in April 2015 researchers at Duke University presented a video that showed male mice "singing" a tune after either smelling the urine of a female mouse or being in her presence. The sounds were recorded using a microphone designed to capture 35 to 125 kilohertz (kz), which is a much higher frequency than we can hear:
Recent research published in eLife shows that female mice will sing back if interested in the male pursuing her. You can listen to a clip of a…
dr. dolittle | December 23, 2013This was too cute not to share. Here is a video of animals in Blank Park Zoo in Iowa performing their version of a Christmas carol.