Audubon’s Warbler, Willamette Valley, Oregon. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

Birdsongs have inspired poets and lovers, becoming one of the philosophical focal points in ancient Greece and Rome. They have also led to several long-ago debates about the relationship between birdsong and human language.

“A robust body of evidence accrued over approximately 100 years demonstrates striking analogies between birdsong and speech, both learned forms of vocalization,” states the Royal Society journal.

Some thinkers have argued that humans are the only rational animals since they have a language, unlike nonhuman animals. Yet bird communications through melodious songs sound very much like a language, casting doubts on these views. No nonhuman animals other than birds, specifically songbirds, display such fine musical articulation and use these communication skills among their species.

“Humans and songbirds share the key trait of vocal learning, manifested in speech and song, respectively. Striking analogies between these behaviors include that both are acquired during developmental critical periods when the brain’s ability for vocal learning peaks,” adds the Royal Society article.

The Philosophical View on Songbirds

Aristotle, a philosopher and scientist educated at Plato’s Academy, first systematically studied birds and all other known living creatures. In addition to his other works, he wrote the monumental History of Animals (the original title in Greek was the more modest Inquiries on Animals). It remained the authoritative source for Western zoology until the 16th century.

Aristotle asked the questions of what and why. He already knew, ages ago, that birds learn their songs. In History of Animals, he states:

“Of little birds, some sing a different note from the parent birds, if they have been removed from the nest and have heard other birds singing; and a mother-nightingale has been observed to give lessons in singing to a young bird, from which spectacle we might obviously infer that the song of the bird was not equally congenital with mere voice, but was something capable of modification and of improvement.”

In particular, parrots may be able to closely mimic the human voice due to the use of their tongue. According to popular opinion, in ancient Greece, parrots didn’t produce melodies but had a semi-human voice and could learn Greek. Aristotle didn’t buy it. According to him, only humans had logos[reason] and the ability to use language to communicate. What parrots did was simply mimicry. Fast-forward to the poignant story of “Humboldt’s talking parrot.”

In 1799, during his explorations along the Orinoco River, German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt “stayed with a local Indigenous Carib tribe near the isolated village of Maypures,” located deep in the Venezuelan jungle. The Indigenous inhabitants kept tame parrots in cages and taught them how to speak. But among them was one bird that “sounded unusual.” When Humboldt asked why, he learned that the parrot had belonged to a nearby enemy tribe who were driven from their home village and land. The few surviving members fled to a tiny islet perched between the river rapids. It was there where their culture and their lingo endured for a few more years until the last tribesman died. The only creature “who spoke their language” was the talking parrot.

Fortunately, Humboldt transcribed the parrot’s vocabulary phonetically in his journal. This helped rescue a portion of the vanished tribe’s language from extinction.

Today, some linguists accept this story as a metaphor for the vulnerability of languages, with one

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