Male superb fairy wren, Malurus cyaneus
A frequent brood parasite host
A frequent brood parasite host
Tuesday, 7 October 2025
Creationism Refuted - Evolution of 'Language' in Birds.
Birds all over the world use the same sound to warn of threats - The Conversation
A recent paper published in Nature Ecology & Evolution lends support to Darwin’s theory that language evolved from learned responses to innate sounds conveying specific information — such as a scream in response to pain — behaviours shared across many species.
The paper, by a team of researchers led by William E. Feeney of the Doñana Biological Station, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Seville, Spain, and the School of Environment and Science, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia, together with James A. Kennerley of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York, USA, suggests that different bird species—separated by thousands of miles geographically and tens of millions of years evolutionarily—may illustrate Darwin’s theory in practice.
This study not only strengthens Darwin’s insight into the evolutionary roots of human language but also highlights how universal biological processes—rather than supernatural design—can account for the complexity of communication across species.
Feeney and Kennerley, with co-author Niki Teunissen of Monash University, have explained their discovery and its significance in an article in The Conversation, reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence and reformatted for stylistic consistency.
Birds all over the world use the same sound to warn of threats.
An angry Australian Superb Fairy-wren confronting a Horsfield’s bronze-cuckoo.
Language enables us to connect with each other and coordinate to achieve incredible feats. Our ability to communicate abstract concepts is often seen as a defining feature of our species, and one that separates us from the rest of life on Earth.
This is because while the ability to pair an arbitrary sound with a specific meaning is widespread in human language, it is rarely seen in other animal communication systems. Several recent studies have shown that birds, chimpanzees, dolphins, and elephants also do it. But how such a capacity emerges remains a mystery.
While language is characterised by the widespread use of sounds that have a learned association with the item they refer to, humans and animals also produce instinctive sounds. For example, a scream made in response to pain. Over 150 years ago, naturalist Charles Darwin suggested the use of these instinctive sounds in a new context could be an important step in the development of language-like communication.
In our new study, published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution, we describe the first example of an animal vocalisation that contains both instinctive and learned features – similar to the stepping stone Darwin envisioned.
A unique call towards a unique threat
Birds have a variety of enemies, but brood parasites are unique.
Brood parasites, such as cuckoos, are birds that reproduce by laying their egg in the nest of another species and manipulating the unsuspecting host to incubate their egg and raise their offspring. The first thing a baby cuckoo does after it hatches is heave the other baby birds out of the nest, claiming the effort of its unsuspecting foster parents all to itself.
A baby fan-tailed cuckoo (left) being fed by its white-browed scrubwren host (right) in Australia.
Cameryn Brock
For example, our past work has shown that in Australia, the superb fairy-wren has evolved a unique call it makes when it sees a cuckoo. When other fairy-wrens hear this alarm call, they quickly come in and attack the cuckoo.
During these earlier experiments, we couldn’t help but notice other species were responding to this call and making a very similar call themselves. What’s more, discussions with collaborators who were working in countries as far away as China, India and Sweden suggested the birds there were also making a very similar call – and also only towards cuckoos.
Birds from around the world use the same call
First, we explored online wildlife media databases to see if there were other examples of this call towards brood parasites. We found 21 species that produce this call towards their brood parasites, including cuckoos and parasitic finches. Some of these birds were closely related and lived nearby each other, but others shared a last common ancestor over 50 million years ago and live on different continents.
For example, this is a superb fairy-wren responding to a shining bronze-cuckoo in Australia.
William Feeney, CC BY
And this is a tawny-flanked prinia responding to a cuckoo finch in Zambia.
William Feeney, CC BY
[Note: These audio files may not play on some systems, but they can be downloaded (right click > Save as…)]:
As vocalisations exist to communicate information, we suspected this call either functioned to attract the attention of their own or other species.
To compare these possibilities, we used a known database of the world’s brood parasites and hosts. If this call exists to communicate information within a species, we expected the species that produce it should be more cooperative, because more birds are better at defending their nest.
We did not find this. Instead, we found that species that produce this call exist in areas with more brood parasites and hosts, suggesting it exists to enable cooperation across different species that are targeted by brood parasites.
Communicating across species to defend against a common threat
To test whether these calls were produced uniquely towards cuckoos in multiple species, we conducted experiments in Australia.
When we presented superb fairy-wrens or white-browed scrubwrens with a taxidermied cuckoo, they made this call and tried to attack it. By contrast, when they were presented with other taxidermied models, such as a predator, this call was very rarely produced.
When we presented the fairy-wrens and scrubwrens with recordings of the call, they responded strongly. This suggests both species produce the call almost exclusively towards cuckoos, and when they hear it they respond predictably.
If this call is something like a “universal word” for a brood parasite across birds, we should expect different species to respond equally to hearing it – even when it is produced by a species they have never seen before. We found exactly this: when we played calls from Australia to birds in China (and vice-versa) they responded the same.
This suggests different species from all around the world use this call because it provides specific information about the presence of a brood parasite.
Superb fairy-wrens attacking a taxidermied shining bronze-cuckoo.
William Feeney, CC BY
Our study suggests that over 20 species of birds from all around the world that are separated by over 50 million years of evolution use the same call when they see their respective brood parasite species.
This is fascinating in and of itself. But while these birds know how to respond to the call, our past work has shown that birds that have never seen a cuckoo do not produce this call, but they do after watching others produce it when there is a cuckoo nearby.
In other words, while the response to the call is instinctive, producing the call itself is learned.
Whereas vocalisations are normally either instinctive or learned, this is the first example of an animal vocalisation across species that has both instinctive and learned components. This is important, because it appears to represent a midpoint between the types of vocalisations that are common in animal communication systems and human language.
So, Darwin may have been right about language all along.
William Feeney, Research fellow, Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University; Estación Biológica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC); James Kennerley, Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University, and Niki Teunissen, Postdoctoral research fellow, Monash University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Abstract
Signals in vocal communication systems range from innate to learned. Although innate and learned signals are often assumed to be independent, Darwin speculated that they could be evolutionarily related, with the former being the foundation of the latter even in our own communication system, language. Here we test this hypothesis by studying the vocal communication systems of avian hosts of brood parasites. First, we show that 21 bird species separated by approximately 53 million years of evolution produce structurally similar ‘whining’ vocalizations towards their respective brood parasites. Exploring the social correlates of whining vocalization production, we find that species that produce this vocalization often exist in areas with dense parasite–host networks, suggesting that its production facilitates interactions among host species. Experiments across three continents show that this vocalization is referential towards brood parasites in multiple host species, that hearing them elicits an innate rapid recruiting response, and that host species from different continents respond equally to the whining vocalizations of each other, indicating that convergent use facilitates cooperative defences across species. Our results provide an example of a referential animal vocalization for which sound production in the correct context is learned but for which hearing it elicits an innate response, representing an intermediate between innate and learned signals.
Feeney, W.E., Kennerley, J.A., Wheatcroft, D. et al.
Learned use of an innate sound-meaning association in birds.
Nat Ecol Evol (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02855-9
© 2025 Springer Nature Ltd.
Reprinted under the terms of s60 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The authors make no suggestion that the shared vocal patterns they observed require any explanation beyond the natural processes described by evolutionary theory. There is no hint that they are about to abandon the Theory of Evolution and invoke supernatural design or intervention to account for such convergence, the way creationists cult leaders have been assuring their followers is about to happen - for the last 50 years or more. Instead, their findings align squarely with Darwin’s view that communication systems, including the origins of human language, arose through gradual modification and adaptation of pre-existing sounds with functional meaning.
This research reinforces the strength of the Theory of Evolution as a unifying framework for understanding complex behaviours across species. It shows how natural selection can shape communication in much the same way it shapes morphology or physiology—by favouring signals that improve survival and reproductive success. Far from exposing any weakness in evolutionary theory, these observations exemplify its power to connect apparently diverse phenomena under a single, coherent explanation.
Creationist superstition adds nothing to our understanding of such patterns. The evidence from nature continues to support Darwin’s insight: that the voices of living creatures, from birds to humans, are echoes of a long evolutionary history rather than the product of sudden, separate creation.
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