HENRY - The human evolution news relay
Entries in the ' birds ' category
Written June 27, 2008 in birds, evolution, genetics, phylogenetics
Today’s Science sees the publication of a phylogenomic study of 196 bird species, which has some rather marked differences to the traditional phylogenies of bird species. Abstract says -
Deep avian evolutionary relationships have been difficult to resolve as a result of a putative explosive radiation. Our study examined ~32 kilobases of aligned nuclear DNA sequences [...]
Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker talks about “the woman behind the world’s chattiest Parrots”, Irene Pepperberg:
As the crowd at the Midwest Bird Expo waited for the cognitive scientist Irene Pepperberg to take the podium, the hum of human chatter was punctuated by the sound of parrots whooping it up—twittering and letting loose with wolf [...]
Written April 12, 2008 in anthropology, austronesian, birds, humor, language, linguistics, people, quotes
William Thurston on the role of humor in language change in his 1987 book “Processes of Change in the languages of North-Western New Britain”:
Many linguistic innovations arise in the context of humor, a common mechanism for mediating interpersonal relationships. For example, in 1978, during my second trip to work with the Anêm, but Goulden’s first, [...]
Kenneth Chang in the NY Times talks about The Grim Story of Maya Blue:
The vibrant sky color can be seen on pottery, murals and other artifacts produced by the Maya people of Central America centuries ago and the unusual, durable pigment remains vibrant today long after other colors have faded away.
It was also the color of Chaak, the rain god, and of human sacrifice.
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In PLoS One - Singing in the Rain Forest: How a Tropical Bird Song Transfers Information:
How information transmission processes between individuals are shaped by natural selection is a key question for the understanding of the evolution of acoustic communication systems. Environmental acoustics predict that signal structure will differ depending on general features of the habitat. [...]
Written February 20, 2008 in birds, neuroscience, new-caledonian-crows, non-human, psychology
Long-term readers will know that I’ve got a number of friends working on the wonderfully intelligent New Caledonian Crow. These birds make and use a number of different tools for extracting grubs from logs. You can see my catalogue of posts on these birds here.
Recently, they’ve got a new paper out showing that the brains [...]
Written October 2, 2007 in anthropology, birds, human prehistory, humor, language, linguistics, misc, music, non-human, psychology, religion, science, stupidity
Ok. Time for a catch up post. There’s just not enough hours in the day…
1: Native Language Governs The Way Toddlers Interpret Speech Sounds:
Toddlers are learning language skills earlier than expected and by the age of 18 months understand enough of the lexicon of their own language to recognize how speakers use sounds to convey [...]
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