Examining tutor-tutee interactions and their effect on song learning in Zebra finches

Abstract

In neuroscience, zebra finches are used for studying bird vocalizations, which helps us draw parallels with human speech learning (Doupe & Kuhl, 2003). In this songbird species, only the male zebra finch sings as a part of its courtship ritual (Sossinka Bohner 1980). This song is learnt by the juvenile from its father (Slater et al., 1988) and (Derégnaucourt et al., 2013) explored the effects of different tutors in place of the father as well as the influence of male and female siblings on song learning of young zebra finch. These investigations center on the tutor's preferences and how presence of other birds affect learning in young juvenile zebra finches. Further, different birds show different accuracy of song copying. Thus, it is possible some interaction between the tutor and juvenile influence this copying of the song. Its difficult to tutor zebra finch bird using playback through a speaker. One of the reasons for less accurate song copying by the juvenile could be the absence of interaction with the tutor, which is present in live tutoring. Thus, it is important to quantify the interaction between tutor and juvenile during song learning. This might provide reason for difference in learning between live and playback tutoring. We analyzed the father-son interaction recordings of zebra finches and identified some behaviors. We didn't detect much correlation between the father's singing and the juvenile's total song learning. However, we observed some singing events accompanied by juveniles' quivering, stretching, and self-cleaning behaviors. It appeared that the father's singing was inspired by the little juvenile's "activities."