Birdsong may be more similar to human speech than previously thought.
A new study by the University of Manchester in collaboration with Chester Zoo reveals that birds follow the same language efficiency rule that humans use.
This principle, known as the Brevity Law or Zipf’s Law of Abbreviation, states that frequently used words are shorter for efficiency.
The research team led by Dr. Tucker Gilman developed a computational tool called ZLAvian that examined more than 600 songs from seven bird species across 11 different populations.
The challenge was that individuals within bird species often vary widely, but the findings showed that the most common bird phrases were consistently shorter, matching Zipf’s Law in human language.
This discovery suggests that efficient communication may be a universal pattern across species.
Dr. Rebecca Lewis from Chester Zoo said the tool could help other researchers study language efficiency in more birds and even other animals.
