By Susan Milius
African birds called pied babblers turn out to have their own version of goofy baby-feeding noises—think “Mmm nummy nummy aaaapricots.” What’s more, the birds actually teach their chicks that the sounds mean food, says Nichola Raihani of the University of Cambridge in England.
To test whether the babblers were actively teaching, Raihani and collaborator Amanda Ridley of the University of Cape Town in South Africa examined whether the bird parent modified its behavior around the chicks in a way that promoted learning but inconvenienced or offered no benefit to the adult.