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Do you know why the bachman sparrow sings? The College of Science, undergraduate
researcher of the year, Sabah, and his research professor, Dr. Rindy Anderson explain.
They're known to sing one of the most beautiful songs North American song birds sing.
What's interesting is that, although they're touted as being such beautiful songsters, we know very little about
what they're doing with these songs. These bachman sparrow sing between 35 and 50 song types.
So one of the questions that I'm interested in is, 'why do you need all of this complexity'.
When were were studying to see how males are using all of these song types and the other types of vocalizations that they have
when they're in aggressive disputes. What we do out here is we use this recording equipment
to get their vocalizations and their sound repeaters. Look through this screw here and I find the bird and point it right at the bird.
That way we can get really good songs. Songs that males sing, play a really key role in mediating these
agressive disputes. Communicating things like their motivation to fight, how strong they are, whether
they're going to escalate the encounter or deescalate the encounter, and whether they're going to attack.
And what we found is that of all the things they do vocally during these exchanges between rivals,
the number of quiet songs that they sing, well its called whisper songs, is the best predictor of an attack.
A male bachman sparrow communicates his willingness and his motivation to a rival by how many
whispers he gives. Which just leads to the question, why would you whisper to your strongest threat?
Only time and research will tell.