Zebras on Foxtel

[Diane]

I was watching a doco on Foxtel last night called "Why we talk" about how and why speech developed and how it gets changed.
As an experiment they brought up zebra finches in special sound proof cages so they never heard the male bird song, this is how the song is picked up by the young. The young males had a very stunted song. When these birds went on to have their own young the the second generation was kept in the same soundproofed manner, when they started to sing they had the same stunted song of the father but added their own little bits to the song. The amazing thing was, that after a few generations the zebras song was added to by each generation and ended up sounding similar to the original song with a few tweaks.
They might be little but they are very helpful to science.

[jusdeb]

Darwin ( yes the man behind the evolution theory ) used finches a lot in his studies especially in the Galapagos where he studied the same species that had evolved on different islands with different food sources .....see awesome little critter is the humble finch.

[finchbreeder]

Think we can use this as a reason to import some? Very important scientific research. Into the breeding habits of finches when the genetic window is widened? After all !@#$ is supposed to baffle brains.
LML