Birdsong is culturally transmitted, and geographical variations of song have been found in several songbird species. There evidence that such dialects contribute to reproductive isolation through variation female preference. In the wild, there no report consistent populations zebra finches. However, under laboratory conditions, we were able artificially create different colony-wide dialects. th...

Natural behaviors, such as foraging, tool use, social interaction, birdsong, and language, exhibit branching sequential structure. Such structure should be learnable if it can be inferred from the statistics of early experience. We report that juvenile zebra finches learn such sequential structure in song. Song learning in finches has been extensively studied, and it is generally believed that ...

The retinal image changes that occur during locomotion, the optic flow, carry information about self-motion and the three-dimensional structure of the environment. Especially fast moving animals with only little binocular vision depend on these depth cues for maneuvering. They actively control their gaze to facilitate perception of depth based on cues in the optic flow. In the visual system of ...