Urban environments influence birdsong

Researchers studying the Great Tit, Parus major in 10 European cities have shown that urban environments affect bird songs. In comparison to forest-dwelling tits, urban tits had shorter and faster songs, with an upshift in frequency. This appears to be a result of having to compete with low-frequency environmental noise such as traffic.

The full paper by Hans Slabbekoorn and Ardie den Boer-Visser is available in todays Current Biology (abstract only). You can hear the birdsongs here

Posted on timeDecember 5th, 2006 by userSimon Greenhill



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