La Tour du Valat

Institut de recherche pour la conservation des zones humides méditerranéennes

Titre :	Melody learning and transposition in the bullfinch (Pyrrhula pyrrhula).
Auteurs :	H. R. Guttinger, Auteur ; T. Turner, Auteur ; S. Dobmeyer, Auteur ; J. Nicolai, Auteur
Type de document :	Article
Dans :	Journal of Ornithology (143(3) JUL 2002)
Article en page(s) :	303-318
Langues:	Anglais
Résumé :	The analysis of the songs of bullfinches that as juveniles had learned a human melody or song parts of a canary give insights into the perceptive faculties and into the learned coordination between the muscles of the vocal organ, the syrinx - responsible for the pitch of the note - and the respiratory apparatus, which determines the different durations of consecutive notes. Our study is focussed on determining whether the bullfinch can learn the temporal pattern of a song, and if it perceives melodies. Does a bird perceive the series of notes in the human melody as a series of unrelated elements or is its perception more humanoid, for example by determining the relative proportion of ascending and descending intervals? The following results were obtained: (1) A bullfinch learned a human tune of 45 notes from a human tutor according to the tune's relative pitch value (transposition) and in a high corresponding rhythm (e. g. semi-quaver, quaver or crochet). The bullfinch raised by a canary copied

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