how is it that Brood Parasitic fledglings come to recognize it’s own species instead of whatever bird hatched and raised it? Wouldn’t it learn its surrogate parent’s calls and songs?
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Birds do not typically learn their songs. They are born with their songs genetically implanted as natural behaviors that they display in time.
Even more intelligent birds like parrots that can learn to produce other songs and sounds also have inherent ones that they just instinctively know.
I imagine instinctively when they hear their own species songs and chirps it’s like a person who is calling your name out in your mother tongue that you know fluently for the first time when before all you knew was Spanish at a first grade level.
This triggers their brain to recognize that sound as familiar as it does it’s host probably more so.
If you’re thinking about imprinting, only some species imprint on their mothers as a way of knowing who their peers are and who are different species. The rest, cuckoos included, just have it genetically hardwired. I’m pretty sure imprinting is more common in social birds, for whom sticking around others of the same species is much more important.
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