[Animals]That woodpecker knocking is actually a drum solo, scientists say

[Dr@g0n]

The incessant drumming of a woodpecker on a hollow tree can be an annoying distraction for anyone who has to listen to it. To other woodpeckers, however, it’s as distinct and as telling as any birdsong. A new study, published last week in the journal PLOS Biology, found that a woodpecker’s drumming and a songbird’s singing are governed by similar specialized structures in the birds’ brains, structures that aren’t found in those of other nonsinging birds. And both behaviors serve the same purposes of marking out territory and attracting mates, the researchers said. The findings are especially intriguing because the singing of songbirds has important parallels to human speech, so the drumming of woodpeckers could now, too, give new scientific insights into how humans talk. “Woodpeckers use drumming as songbirds use song,” said a senior author of the new research, evolutionary biologist Matthew Fuxjager, an associate professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. “The structures are similar in size and shape and are similar in terms of where we find them in the brain.” The research combines two approaches to the study of woodpeckers: work by Fuxjager into their ecology and work by his collaborator, Erich Jarvis, a professor of neurogenetics at Rockefeller University in New York, into the genetic mechanisms at play. The researchers found that drumming by woodpeckers and singing by songbirds are governed by very similar structures in the forebrains of the animals, made of cells that strongly express the protein parvalbumin. “When you study songbirds, hummingbirds and parrots, you find areas that control vocal learning express parvalbumin more than other parts of the brain,” Fuxjager said. He noted that structures of cells that strongly express parvalbumin are also seen in human brains but that they aren’t seen in birds that don’t communicate with vocalizations. It was a surprise, therefore, when the research led by Fuxjager and Jarvis found such structures in the woodpecker brains but not in those of birds that don’t sing, such as emus, penguins and ducks (quacks don’t count). Fuxjager suggested in the study that both the singing and the drumming originated in specialized brain structures for refined motor control in the ancestors of modern birds. Although they might sound quite different, the behaviors are remarkably similar. Both involve complex muscle coordination, and both are used to mark out territory to competitors, which can hear the drumming or singing from afar.
link:https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/woodpecker-knocking-actually-drum-solo-scientists-say-rcna49456