Bird songs and human speech share similar acoustic patterns

Researchers identified shared acoustic patterns between bird songs and human speech and song across different cultures and species.

A team of scientists spent ten years studying the vocal behaviors of zebra finches and other birds to see if they shared common traits with human vocal expressions. The researchers published their findings in Science, showing that humans and birds follow similar patterns when producing sounds.

The team collected and analyzed more than 70,000 song syllables from over 360 bird species and compared them to speech and song samples from 52 human languages. The analysis revealed that both humans and birds tend to finish phrases with longer syllables and organize their sounds to minimize changes in tone between neighboring syllables. Both species also produce their vocalizations using rhythmic and predictable patterns.

In some instances, bird songs resembled human singing, while in other cases, they shared more similarities with human speech. Scientists investigated whether these patterns resulted from vocal learning, a process where individuals learn vocal structures from others. While both humans and some birds, such as mynas and hummingbirds, possess the ability to learn vocalizations, the study found that the diversity of sequence patterns among species does not correlate with the ability to learn.

Instead, the researchers suggest that physical constraints, such as the need to coordinate breathing with vocal muscles, may cause these shared patterns. Because mynas appeared approximately 50 million years before humans, the researchers are exploring whether these ancestral bird sounds influenced early human musical expression.