Vocal comprehension learning is widespread across birds

Vocal comprehension learning is widespread across birds

For decades, scientists have known that only a few groups of birds—songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds—can learn to produce new sounds. But a new article in The Quarterly Review of Biology reveals that many more birds can learn to understand the sounds of others, suggesting that comprehension learning, not production, may be the foundation for the evolution of language.