City Slicker Birds Shun Their Country Cousins

According to scientists, city Great Tits prefer other city Great Tits over country Great Tits. (Lets act like adults). The researchers found that the city dwellers responded more strongly to songs of fellow city dwellers and the same held true for the bumpkins. The average minimum pitch of male Great Tit songs in noisy urban areas was higher than in quieter, rural areas just a few miles away. Dr Rupert Marshall, of Aberystwyth University, Wales, and his team recorded bird song in 20 different cities in Britain. He says, "People speak louder and higher in noisy places like pubs and bars but still recognise their friends' voices once they go outside. Great tits seem to learn the high notes from their neighbours but don't respond as strongly to lower rural tones even when it's quiet."

Comments

Re:Better Idea

[Rei]

Five points if anyone can tell me what song lyric, round-tripped between English and Japanese, yields this:

"(13) Design, pony, well, it is the best way to learn to kill me?"

Here's a hint: other famous lyrics by the same artist (different songs) end up as:

(6) In this case, you must eat something in the brain? We can not be forced to - I can not, in the first place.
(5) TERODAKUTIRUMANDERUBURO Rorschach, a set of light occurs.
(13) May ROGUINMANEJAHOWAITOAPPU this page is to create a country code monkey.
(10) Unfortunately, I think I have a weapon. We are working to improve.

(that latter one has some funny intermediaries, such as "(4) Unfortunately, I do and I have a weapon. It tries to do good.")

Oh, here's something really weird: try round-tripping between English and Japanese "our robot". For some reason, it thinks that "our robot" in Japanese is "Google" (Google no ROBOTO -- "Google's robots"). Bizarre.