We can now listen to songs that a small Argentinian bird thought of in its sleep. Listening to such songs across more species of birds could inform the debate on how birds dream.
Physicist Gabriel Mindlin at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina got interested in the mechanics of birdsong in the early 2000s, but expected it to be just a “fun detour”. Instead, it led him down the path of trying to hear what happens in birds’ minds. He and his colleagues have now converted the muscle activity of several great kiskadees (Pitangus sulphuratus) into audible songs.
“Gabriel said, ‘I’m generating the song, the synthetic song of the [bird] dream,’ and I was really shocked by how similar [to birdsong] it was,” says Ana Amador, also at the University of Buenos Aires and a co-author of the study. “I was expecting something that maybe resembles birdsong but is much rougher. I was impressed.”