Adventure Ausrama Blog

It seems that bird calls evolve like human language. Research on the chestnut-crowned babbler shows the cooperative bird is able to change the order of sounds to make new "sentences" with different meanings. The babbler does not sing like other birds. It makes a series of unique sounds. Analysis shows that the bird is communicating in different ways by stringing sounds together. It has two main categories of calls A and B. If flying, only AB calls are made. In the nest with young birds BAB calls predominate. When different calls were played back, AB calls initiated flight in the birds that heard it and BAB sounds caused them to go the nest. These "sentences" were definitely perceived as unique instructions. Even when sound prompt elements were changed for the sentences the birds could still tell the difference. This is the first time a vocabulary type structure in communication has been observe in any animal other than human. The first soun...

There are new facts about the evolution of fish. An ancient fish fossil has provided preserved muscle tissue. European and Australian scientists have examined a placoderm fossil 380 million years old. Early fish did not have moving jaws with joints. Their mouths were fixed partially open, though they could still move. Jaw structure was presumed to be like sharks, because that was taken to be a living example. The fossil has changed this assumption. It shows a pronounced shoulder structure. From this girdle neck muscles attached to a dermal joint. So the head moved relative to the body but the jaw did not. Sharks do not have joints in the neck - their necks are flexible. Another difference is musculature in the abdomen much like four-limbed vertebrates such as horses. Rather than being a evolutionary step for four-legged animals it was fully developed by placoderms, the first vertebrate with armoured plates and no teeth. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://w...

The bowerbird is unusual to say the least.  A fancy structure is built by the male to attract females.  It is an arch of still growing undergrowth with a walk through from one side to the other.  In the middle and to one side is a collection of leaves, fruit, shells, dead insects and odd glistening objects manufactured by humans. When a female is in range the male "screeches" at the female to make her look at his handiwork. Males often wave fruit at females.  The male stays in the area of the bower for up to ten years so he has an investment in that location.  Researchers have found that males do not just pick up fruit laying around.  The spotted bowerbird actually grows his own fruit. As the male tends to his "plot" he throws out dried fruit of the bush tomato and clears the ground, thus leaving healthy seeds to sprout and grow into bushes.  The area around the bower is full of bushes in fruit with green tomatoes.  This symbiosis is pa...