Female zebra finches are picky in their mates, and have found a clever way to reproduce if they don't find someone. Margo Milanowski Nov 5, 2021 12:47 PM EDT Wolfgang Forstmeier ...

More information: Linda Bistere et al, Female calls promote song learning in male juvenile zebra finches, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53251-z Provided by Max Planck Society ...

Female zebra finches are almost entirely gray and don't sing like the males. When they're young, all zebra finches look like females, except their beaks are black instead of orange. Their adult ...

Each male zebra finch devlops his own song Zebra finches belong to a third singing type. Males also learn their song from conspecifics and only at an early age, but they do this in an individual ...

In fact, the zebra finches, both male and female, performed so well in the tests that four of them were given the more challenging task of distinguishing between 56 different zebra finches.

For example, when times are tough for zebra finches, more females are produced. Some birds, such as the kookaburra, contrive usually to hatch a male chick first, then a female one.

Scientists have known that male zebra finches adjust their tune when they have courtship—i.e., copulation—on their minds with either a prospective or lifelong mate. (They are monogamous.) The ...

Funding: This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (R35 GM150714, RO1 AR047364, R37 AR060306, RO1 AR078050 to CMC), National Science and Technology Council (Dragon Gate fellowship ...