科学美国人60秒:Inbred Songbirds Croon out of Tune

Just like humans have to learn to talk, songbirds aren't just born singing—they have to learn to carry a tune. "So in the beginning they just babble." Raissa de Boer, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. "And they learn from a tutor, so they need an example song in order to learn it."
就如同人们必须学说话一样，鸣禽也并不是天生就会唱歌——它们必须学会唱歌不跑调。“所以，开始它们只是呀呀学语。”Raissa de Boer，是比利时安特卫普大学的行为生态学家。“它们跟从导师学习，为了学会，它们都需要一首典型歌曲。”

She says the example song might come from the chick's father. And over time, the baby bird tweaks that tweet, to make it its own. "And then it takes almost a year until they're fully adult, until the next spring, for the final song to come out."
Raissa de Boer表示，这首典型的歌曲可能来自于幼鸟的父亲。随着时间的推移，幼鸟吱吱的叫声，最后变成自己的歌声。幼鸟完全长成成鸟，大约需要一年的时间，直到来年春天，最终的歌曲终于成形啦!

De Boer and her colleagues investigated that song-learning process in canaries, using two groups of baby birds: the first consisted of inbred birds, whose parents were siblings; the second had parents that were. And the researchers found that the songs of inbred birds [sound of inbred birds singing] and those of the other, outbred birds sound… pretty similar to the human ear. "I cannot tell the difference."
Raissa de Boer和同事们利用了两组幼鸟，调查了金丝雀学习唱歌的过程：第一组是近亲繁殖生出的幼鸟，幼鸟的双亲是兄妹;而第二组幼鸟有父母陪伴。研究人员发现，第一组和第二组鸟儿的歌声对人耳都非常的熟悉。“我不能分辨两者的区别。”

But computer analysis revealed that the inbred birds sang notes at slightly different pitches—and with tones that were not quite as pure. "So basically they sang out of tune, in comparison to outbred birds." The results appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
但是电脑分析表明，近亲生出的鸟儿唱出的哥儿音高不同——音调不纯。“所以，基本上与非近亲生出的鸟儿相比，第一组鸟儿已经跑掉啦!”该研究结果发表在《 皇家学会学报B》

And even though our untrained ears have a hard time telling the tones apart, female canaries seemed to notice. They tended to lay smaller eggs, and fewer of them, when they mated with inbred birds as opposed to the better songsters. Suggesting that the quality of a songbird's genes may be revealed in its tunes.
尽管我们人类未经训练的耳朵很难区分这两种音调，但是雌性金丝雀却能注意到两者的区别。当与更好的歌手相比，雌性金丝雀和近亲交配后，它们下的蛋的数量会减少、同时蛋的体积也较小。这表明鸣禽基因的数量可能会显示在它们的歌声中哦!